128 PESSIMISM. 



§ 2 2. Lastly, the claim of the intellectual activit- 

 ies to provide an aim to life has really been already 

 disposed of by Scepticism. If knowledge cannot 

 lull asleep the discordant strife of the elements of 

 our being, if it cannot discover the road to harmony 

 and to bliss, then knowledge fails in practice, and 

 then its theoretical defects stamp it as an illusion 

 (cf ch. iii., § 20, 21). And it is an illusion for the 

 same reason as the other activities of life, because 

 in order to be true it requires an ideal, fixed, per- 

 manent and definite, as the standard whereby to 

 measure the passing and indeterminate flux of 

 things. And such an ideal it can nowhere find in a 

 world of Becoming. 



The Becoming of the world is the rock upon 

 which the ark of life is shattered : to know, to be 

 good, to be happy, we require a fixed standard of 

 Being, but the ideal which our reason and our heart 

 demand our eyes can nowhere see. 



Thus, all reason can do is to render us sensible of 

 the hopelessness of our position ; it is the fire, 

 kindled by the collision of discordant elements, 

 which consumes the soul of man, and by the lurid 

 light it throws upon our gloomy lot we can just 

 see that our doom is irrevocable, that we are the 

 helpless victims of a gigantic auto da fd, of which 

 Evolution is the celebration. For since every 

 advance does but widen the chasm between the 

 ideal and the actual, our only hope would be to 

 retrace the course of Evolution, and to simplify life 

 by a return to the primitive contentment of the 

 amoeba. But though the amoeba is far more per- 

 fectly adapted to its environment than any of its 

 descendants, it may well be doubted whether even 

 the amoeba is happy : in any case, it suffices that 



