NOT PRIMARILY HEDONISTIC. 99 



development of the controversy, which does not 

 affect Its essential nature, nor justify the derivation 

 of Pessimism from the consciousness of a baffled 

 love of pleasure. The Pessimist need not assert 

 that life normally brings with it a surplus of pain, 

 though he will doubtless be prone to think so, i.e., 

 he need not base his pessimism on hedonism : his 

 denial of the pleasure- value of life may be the con- 

 sequence and not the cause of his pessimism. No 

 doubt most pessimists have also been hedonists, and 

 several excellent reasons may be given for the fact ; 

 but this Is no reason why Pessimism should be 

 based on hedonism. It would be possible to base 

 Pessimism on several non-hedonistic principles ; on 

 a despair of the possibility of goodness, of know 

 ledge, of beauty, or on an aristocratic contempt for 

 human happiness. For It would be possible to argue 

 that the happiness of creatures so petty and con- 

 temptible as men was insufficient to redeem the 

 character of the universe : whether or not man 

 enjoyed a short-lived surplus of ephemeral and 

 intrinsically worthless pleasure, there was in this 

 nothing great, nothing noble, nothing worthy of 

 being the aim of effort, nothing capable of satisfying 

 the aspirations of the soul. 



The deepest pessimism Is not hedonistic ; for 



I hedonism implies a presumption, a confidence In the 

 claims of man, which it cannot countenance ; it 

 asserts, not that life is valueless because it Is un- 

 happy, but that It Is unhappy because It is valueless. 

 And that so many pessimists have been hedonists 

 is easily explained by the facts that so few of them 

 had probed the real depths of the abyss of Pessim- 

 ism, that they, like the majority of men, were 



