134 RKCOXSTRUCTIOX. 



understate or overlook the difficulties that beset the 

 attempt to discover any meaning in life. And from 

 this thoroughness in stating the negative position 

 we may also draw the assurance that whatever 

 germs of higher hopes have survived such ruthless 

 destruction, must surely be immortal, and fraught 

 with no humble destiny. 



Secondly, the wholesale havoc Pessimism has 

 wrought has effectually cleared the ground : Pessim- 

 ism has played the part of a Samson, and in its 

 fall has crushed alike philosopher and Philistine. 

 Not only has it enabled us to see the real drift and 

 final outcome of popular theories Avhich would 

 otherwise be continually delaying our progress, but 

 it has also swept away the mass of philosophic con- 

 structions, of which none have answered, and very 

 few can even be said to have considered, the 

 questions which have been brought forward. So, 

 whenever we encounter doctrines based upon the 

 veiled assumptions of agnosticism, scepticism, and 

 pessimism, or such as have no answer to the poss- 

 ibilities on which they are grounded, we shall be 

 able to reduce them to their lowest terms, as It 

 were, to refer them to their types, and thus to 

 remove their obstructions. We shall give such 

 opponents the choice between yielding or confessing 

 to the latent pessimism of their views, and thus use 

 pessimism as a sort of provisional reductio ad abs7ird- 

 mn, justifying us in rejecting them in their Im- 

 perfect form. 



And, thirdly, we have raised, in an acute form, 

 the question of the method of philosophy, by sho wing- 

 that the attempt to exclude all philosophic methods 

 on the ground of metaphysics, and to speculate 

 about the problems of life l)y means of merely 



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