ix PESSIMISM IN PHILOSOPHY 161 



consequently, it has value and is worth living. This is 

 the position taken by every form of Optimism. 



II. We may decide that Life is inadequate to meet 

 the requirements of the standard applied to it ; that, 

 consequently, it has no value, and so is not worth living. 

 This is the conclusion implied in every form of 

 Pessimism. 



III. We may object on principle to the attempt to 

 answer the question, and contend that it should not be 

 raised, arguing, e.g., that it does not follow from the fact 

 that the value of everything in life may be determined, 

 that we can determine the value of life as a whole. 

 This may be called the agnostic or with a reference to 

 the Kantian denial of metaphysics and its analogous 

 answer to the ultimate question of knowledge the 

 critical answer. 



It is worth pointing out that these three modes of 

 treating the ultimate question of Value correspond exactly 

 to the ultimate modes of answering the question as 

 to the ultimate Fact. We answer the final problem of 

 theoretic knowledge also in three ways: (i) We may 

 declare that existence is ultimately knowable, and explain 

 its nature in more or less tentative systems of constructive 

 metaphysics. (2) We may deny that in the end any 

 thing can be known. This is the sceptical attitude. 

 (3) We may protest that human knowledge is not com 

 petent to solve its ultimate problems, and has no right 

 to raise the question. This is the attitude of a Criticism 

 which shrouds the ultimate metaphysical truth in the 

 unfathomable obscurity of the Thing-in-itself, and yet 

 Tantalus-like, is ever tormented by the phantom of a 

 satisfaction which it believes to be hopelessly beyond its 

 reach. 



Whichever kind of ultimate question, then, we raise, 

 whether that of the nature of ultimate facts or that of 

 their valuation, three alternatives seem possible. But we 

 can hardly avoid asking further whether they are all 

 equally tenable. That is a difficult question which I 

 cannot here discuss exhaustively. The proper academic 



M 



