158 HUMANISM , x 



pains predominated over the pleasures, and the whole 

 question was thus reduced to one of the possibility and 

 result of the hedonistic calculus. Now, it is true that 

 the doctrines of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann lend 

 themselves to such a narrowing of the issue, but I believe 

 that it is possible to demonstrate the essential shallowness 

 and logical inadequacy of a transition which is psycho 

 logically so easy as to have been made almost universally. 

 In the argument that life is not worth living because it 

 involves an excess of pain, the second clause states a 

 reason for the first, and, if it is proved, the conclusion 

 clearly follows. What has not been observed, however, 

 is that even if it should not be proved, the conclusion may 

 yet be true, because it may rest on other reasons. To 

 argue that because one ground for a conclusion is unsound, 

 the conclusion itself cannot be established, would evidently 

 be nothing else than the familiar logical fallacy of denying 

 the antecedent until it has been shown that no other 

 grounds are possible. But this is not the case here. 

 The condemnation of life, which Pessimism essays to 

 pronounce, does not necessarily rest on a single basis : it 

 forms an attitude of thought which has been linked with 

 the assertion of the predominance of pain by a mere 

 accident of historical development. It is quite possible to 

 condemn life on various grounds without holding it to be 

 predominantly painful. It is possible to condemn it, not 

 because it has too little pleasure, but because it has too 

 little of the other ends which are recognized as good in 

 themselves, because it has too little virtue or knowledge 

 or beauty or duration. Life may shock us into a denial 

 of its value also by its moral, its aesthetic, its intellectual 

 deficiencies : it may seem so brief, so nauseatingly petty 

 and contemptible that the game is not worth the candle. 

 In all such cases the Pessimism cuts itself adrift from its 

 supposed hedonist basis ; and, even where the hedonist 

 standard is retained, it need not be of an egoistic 

 character. It may be sympathy with the misery of 

 others that tempts us like the Buddha, like the Preacher 

 in Thomson s City of Dreadful Night, to condemn life. 



