108 THE CKEED OF SCIENCE, KELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



stigmatized by Burke, or else a mere coarse self-assertion 

 or cunning to outwit our competitors in the modern form 

 of the struggle for existence ; qualities contemptible and 

 degrading to human nature, and the opposite of virtues, 

 however necessary their evolution may be shown to be. 



Thus argues the cynical spirit within us all, not with- 

 out some reason. And indeed, in this mood, the facts 

 and conditions of life assume such sombre and sinister 

 hue that a pessimist view of life the most pronounced 

 alone recommends itself to us. Surely, w r e say, there is 

 something ineradicably evil in this thing called human 

 nature; some serpent drop of venom was originally 

 imbibed in the infancy of the species, which has been 

 circulating in the system ever since, and which, until 

 eliminated from the blood, of which there appears no 

 hope, will for ever prevent mankind from attaining to 

 any high goal of virtue or happiness. They cannot 

 attain the first ; they do not deserve the second. Human 

 nature is hopelessly and incorrigibly evil or weak in all 

 men, as theology describes it, and as we feel it in our- 

 selves. 



Shall it be said, in reply, that this spirit speaks too 

 severely, and condemns without discrimination ; that it 

 confounds under one sweeping denunciation, the real 

 and undoubted moral differences between one man and 

 another, as well as all the different shades and degrees of 

 virtue and vice which really show themselves ; and that 

 such cynicism, true to its profession, tends in the indi- 

 vidual to act as if there were no distinction between 

 good and evil, and in the species tends to the fulfilment 

 of its own prophecy that man will never attain to good ? 

 May it be said that the cynicism, such as manifests itself 

 in the great writers, Shakespeare, Pascal, Swift, is a 

 quality good for producing literary effect, and useful as 



