114 PESSIMISM. 



and claims of an ever-deepening sensitiveness will 

 doubtless appear morbid and ridiculous from the 

 fact that they differ in almost every case, they are 

 none the less real, none the less the bane of many 

 lives comparatively free from other sources of misery, 

 none the less a cause of social non-adaptation. 

 And while there is so much dirty work to be done 

 in the world, tendencies which engender in men 

 a distaste for dirty work are not conducive to hap- 

 piness. While, e.g., battles have to be fought, it is 

 a distinct source of misery that so few of the men 

 who fight them should now delight In carnage for 

 its own sake. 



§ 15. But perhaps the most serious and disheart- 

 ening source of non-adaptation to the social environ- 

 ment, and one indeed which largely underlies the 

 symptoms to which allusion has been made, is the 

 over-rapid growth of the social environment itself. 

 It is Impossible for society to harmonize the con- 

 flicting claims of its members because of the con- 

 stant addition of new claimants : adaptation to the 

 social environment Is nullified by the ever-increasing 

 complexity of the social environment itself. 



It was comparatively feasible for political philo- 

 sophers in ancient times to theorize about ideal 

 republics in which social harmony was attained : 

 the citizens for whom they legislated formed but a 

 small proportion even- of the human inhabitants 

 of the State ; their material wants were to be sup- 

 plied by the forced labour of slaves and Inferior 

 classes, whose happiness was excluded from con- 

 sideration. So, too, the difliculties of the population 

 question were evaded by summary methods of 

 infanticide, i.e.^ the rights of children were not 

 recognised, and even in the case of women that 



