THE WOMAN OF EVOLUTION AND PESSIMISM. 31^ 



which the changing facts of life are endlessly produced. 

 A child is only a child to pessimism, a mere human larva, 

 heir to all the defects of human nature, and bound to 

 run the course over which its ancestors have been un- 

 willingly and ineffectively driven. In the light of evolu- 

 tion the child has all the grand possibilities of thought 

 and action and love that go to the making of a man. 

 It sees it not as what it is but as what it may become. 

 And in the light of evolution, human life may be judged 

 not by its failures, but by the strongest and most har- 

 monious representatives of humanity. In the defects 

 of church and state may be read the higher ideals for 

 which men are striving. In the broken ideals of the 

 ethical life may be read the forces inside ourselves 

 " which make for righteousness," and which are the reali- 

 ties in life, rather than the acts of greed and failures of 

 will which make up the sad facts of human existence. 



In his remarkable essay on woman, Arthur Schopen- 

 hauer takes her character and relations as the basis of 



a most caustic analysis. Discarding all 



Schopenhauer's n • j . 



illusion and romance, the " present, 



essay on woman. ' ^ ' 



poor and bare," is allowed to "make 

 its sneering comment" on "the eternal womanly," and 

 it is found to be poor stuff. Schopenhauer finds woman 



to be merely a form of man, modified 



_ ... A by Nature, to make real men possible 



moQitiea man. t- ^ 



and comfortable. " Without woman," 

 he quotes from Jouy, "the beginning of life would be 

 helpless, the middle without pleasure, the end without 

 consolation." 



According to Schopenhauer,* " woman is capable of 

 no great labour of mind or of body." Her "debt of 



* In the paragraphs which follow, the language of Schopen- 

 hauer is much condensed, only enough being quoted to give the 

 substance of the original statements. 



