V IN HUMAN SOCIETY 201 



This may not be the best of all possible worlds, 

 but to say that it is the worst is mere petulant 

 nonsense. A worn-out voluptuary may find 

 nothing good under the sun, or a vain and 

 inexperienced youth, who cannot get the moon he 

 cries for, may vent his irritation in pessimistic 

 moanings ; but there can be no doubt in the 

 mind of any reasonable person that mankind 

 could, would, and in fact do, get on fairly well 

 with vastly less happiness and far more misery 

 than find their way into the lives of nine people 

 out of ten. If each and all of us had been visited 

 by an attack of neuralgia, or of extreme mental 

 depression, for one hour in every twenty-four a 

 supposition which many tolerably vigorous people 

 know, to their cost, is not extravagant the 

 burden of life would have been immensely 

 increased without much practical hindrance to its 

 general course. Men with any manhood in them 

 find life quite worth living under worse conditions 

 than these. 



There is another sufficiently obvious fact, which 

 renders the hypothesis that the course of sentient 

 nature is dictated by malevolence quite untenable. 

 A vast multitude of pleasures, and these among 

 the purest and the best, are superfluities, bits 

 of good which are to all appearance unneces 

 sary as inducements to live, and are, so to speak, 

 thrown into the bargain of life. To those who 

 experience them, few delights can be more 



