8o HUMANISM 



IV 



bankruptcy should be prompted thereby to re-examine 

 and possibly to revise his premisses ; and this Lotze fails 

 to do. The suspicion that the nature of the Absolute 

 which he has identified with the Deity may have something 

 to do with the lamentable failure of his attempts to 

 account for Evil never seems to enter his mind. The 

 conclusions of his philosophy may be in the most patent 

 conflict with the facts, but so much the worse for the facts. 

 We are bidden to have faith in the impossible, if necessary, 

 and pessimism is waved aside with a sneer as being too 

 easy and obvious. 



Now that a writer ordinarily so sympathetic as Lotze 

 should have acquiesced in so flimsy a theodicy shows, I 

 think, the desperate straits to which he was reduced, and 

 seriously detracts from the value of his religious philosophy. 

 I am very far from denying that an element of faith must 

 enter into our ultimate convictions about the world ; for 

 whoever admits the reality of Evil and the possibility of 

 its elimination thereby declares his faith in an ideal which 

 is not yet realized. But surely we have a right to demand 

 that our intellect should only be required to believe in a 

 solution which it does not see, not in one which it sees to 

 be impossible. Now the nature of faith is of the latter 

 sort on Lotze s theory, as we shall see and as he all but 

 admits. It may be meritorious to attempt what is difficult, 

 but it is mere folly to attempt the impossible. Very few, 

 therefore, whether pessimists or otherwise, are likely to be 

 attracted by Lotze s faith. And his sneer at pessimism 

 is a little ungenerous. Pessimism may be cheap and easy 

 and obvious intellectually. That is an excellent reason 

 for meeting it with the strongest, most comprehensible 

 and obvious arguments we can, to prevent simpler minds 

 from falling into it. But pessimism is assuredly not a 

 cheap and easy view to hold emotionally. The burden of 

 most lives is so heavy that none can desire to crush them 

 selves down utterly by dwelling on the futility and worth- 

 lessness of it all. No one, therefore, is willingly a pessimist : 

 every one would fain believe in a more inspiriting view. 

 But all the encouragement Lotze gives is that pessimism 



