THE INTRINSIC PERVERSITY OF THINGS. 97 



This Pessimism which denies that anything can 

 in any way be made of life, because Hfe is hope- 

 lessly irrational, because its conflicting aspects are 

 insuperable, is the primary question for philosophy. 

 If it can be answered, difficulties may remain in 

 plenty, but there is no impossibility, and indeed we 

 are pledged to the faith that an answer may ult- 

 imately be found to every valid difficulty the human 

 mind can validly feel. If it cannot be answered, 

 the whole edifice of life collapses at a blow, and for 

 its practice we are left to the chance guidance of 

 our inclinations, and deprived even of the hope that 

 they will not lead us into destruction. 



And yet such pessimism is particularly formidable 

 because of its very simplicity. It does not require 

 the aid of any abstruse metaphysics ; it has not to 

 rely on subtle inferences that take it beyond the 

 obvious and visible ; it merely takes the facts of the 

 world, such as they are, and requests us to put two 

 and two together. It takes the main activities of 

 life, the main aims of life which are capable of being 

 desired for their own sake, and shows how in each 

 case, (i) their attainment is impossible; (2) their 

 imperfection is inherent and ineradicable ; and (3) 

 the aggravation of these defects is to be looked for 

 in the course of time rather than their amelioration. 

 In this way it does not, it is true, justify the ill- 

 coined title of " pessimism," nor claim to prove a 

 superlative which is ambiguous in the case of 

 optimism and absurd in that of pessimism,^ nor does 



1 Optimism may mean, and originally meant, the doctrine that 

 ours is the best of all possible worlds. But it is often taken as 

 equivalent to the assertion that good predominates. So pessimism 

 should mean that ours was the worst of all possible worlds, but 

 how are we to know this ? 



R. ofS. H 



