TRANSITION TO PESSIMISM. 93 



a false clue that Involves us only the more inextric- 

 ably in the maze of perplexity, its vindicators must 

 be prepared to show that knowledge solves, or can 

 reasonably be considered capable of solving, the 

 problems of practical life, capable of constituting it 

 into a concordant whole. In this way, and in this 

 way alone, knowledge would acquire a problematic 

 certainty, conditional upon its capacity to give, on 

 the basis of its assumptions, a complete solution of 

 the problem of life. 



But Is it likely that knowledge, after failing to 

 justify itself, will be able to solve the whole problem 

 when complicated by the addition of the practical 

 aspect ? This the sceptic will surely deny, and In 

 so doing he becomes a pessimist. 



§ 21. Scepticism passes into Pessimism in two 

 ways. In the first place it is the practical answer 

 of Scepticism to the defence of knowledge on pract- 

 ical grounds. The pessimist admits that know- 

 ledge appears to work ; but it appears to work only 

 in order to lead us the more surely astray, to com- 

 plicate the miseries of life by one more illusory aim ; 

 it works only to work us woe. For how can our 

 science claim indulgence on the ground of its 

 practical success, when all it does is to relieve the 

 lesser miseries of life, in order that we may have 

 the leisure and the sensitiveness the more hope- 

 lessly to feel its primary antinomies ? How can 

 the certainty of mathematics console us for the 

 uncertainty of life ? Or how does the piling up of 

 pyramids and Forth Bridges alleviate the agony of 

 death ? As it was in the beginning, the pessimist 

 will maintain, it is now, and ever will be, that Death 

 and Sin are the fruit of the fruit of the tree of 

 knowledge. It is true, too true, that increase of 



