IT EVOLUTIOX AND ETHICS 73 



Surely it is mere cheap rhetoric to call arguments 

 which have never yet been answered by even the 

 meekest and the least rational of Optimists, sug- 

 gestions of the pride of reason. As to the con- 

 cluding aphorism, its fittest place would be as an 

 inscription in letters of mud over the portal of 

 some ' stye of Epicurus ' ; ^* for that is where the 

 logical application of it to practice would land 

 men, with every aspiration stifled and every effort 

 paralyzed. Why try to set right what is right 

 already ? Why strive to improve the best of all 

 possible worlds ? Let us eat and drink, for as to- 

 day all is right, so to-morrow all will be. 



But the attemj^t of the Stoics to blind them- 

 selves to the reality of evil, as a necessary con- 

 comitant of the cosmic process, had less success 

 than that of the Indian philosophers to exclude 

 the reality of good from their purview. Unfor- 

 tunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to 

 good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our 

 doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness ; 

 and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less 

 easily effaced. Before the grim realities of 

 practical life the pleasant fictions of optimism 

 vanished. If this were the best of all possible 

 worlds, it nevertheless proved itself a very incon- 

 venient habitation for the ideal sage. 



The stoical summary of the whole duty of man, 

 ' Live according to nature,' would seem to imply 

 that the cosmic process is an exemplar for human 



