40 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



and happier future for men. She not only prophesies it, 

 but she will herself be the chief agency in the fulfilment 

 of her prophecy she will bring about the happier future 

 and also fit men for it. 



But though Science cannot despair of men and their 

 prospects without stultifying herself and all her preten- 

 sions, and though the facts and results of evolution, in 

 the hands of Darwin himself, as well as in those of 

 Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Haeckel, and other savants 

 as well as thinkers, lend themselves to a more or less 

 pronounced optimism, nevertheless, we see from the new 

 school of German pessimists that a quite different inter- 

 pretation may be put both on the process of evolution, 

 as well as upon its final result up to the present. The 

 universe, according to Schopenhauer, the founder of the 

 new school of thought, could not well have been worse 

 without ceasing to exist altogether ; life, and above all, 

 consciousness, the great outcome of it, is itself the grand 

 mistake ; and even if our species has made the best of its 

 unfortunate circumstances, which may be doubted ; even 

 if it has come out the conqueror crowned from the 

 general battlefield of existence, yet bad has been the 

 best, and the crown only covers the greater cares. 

 According to Hartmann, who writes with a full know- 

 ledge of Darwin's doctrines, man pays a heavy price for 

 this questionable superiority to the lower animals ; for 

 his widened consciousness has only enlarged the circle 

 of his sufferings, his greater knowledge eminently multi- 

 plied his sorrows, except in so far as it may one day 

 teach the species to end itself and them together. As 

 for our much-vaunted progress, perhaps if it were well 

 looked into, it might equally well deserve a very dif- 

 ferent or opposite name. For the evil of all kinds, 

 physical and moral, ever increases as well as the good, 



