200 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



result, a mistake that must have been made soon or late, 

 here or elsewhere, but which, having been once made 

 and found incurably bad, can only be finally set right by 

 a retracing of the steps made by the unconscious will, 

 by a return to unconsciousness. There is no other 

 remedy ; consciousness being demonstrably an evil in its 

 nature, a ceaseless striving for something which it has 

 not, and a constant dissatisfaction with what it already 

 has. There is no remedy to be expected from its fur- 

 ther development, which will only drive deeper its sting, 

 and give us a keener sense of our poverty, vanity, and 

 misery. In fact, the evils of life increase in direct pro- 

 portion to the widening and deepening of our conscious 

 life, and the most gifted, the men of the deepest thoughts 

 and feelings, are the most unhappy of all. Such are the 

 essential features of the modern pessimism.* 



As an estimate of the worth of life, the pessimism of 

 Schopenhauer and Hartmann is no new pronunciation. 

 It is at least as old as the days of Job and of Solomon, 

 the first of whom enlarges upon the misery, the second 

 upon the vanity, and both upon the worthlessness of life. 

 It is not even new as a metaphysical theory ; for its 

 essential conclusions, reached, moreover, by the same 

 methods of metaphysical and psychological principles 

 confirmed by an appeal to men's experience of life, were 

 taught by Buddha more than twenty-three hundred 

 years ago. In fact, just as the essence of modern 

 materialism may be recognized in the atomism of Demo- 

 critus, so the main features of modern pessimism appear 

 in Buddha's theory of existence, projected some half- 

 century before ; so that if history does not repeat itself, 



* For an account of the systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, 

 see Sully's Pessimism, ch. iv. and v., in which volume also the whole 

 subject of the worth of life is fully and ably discussed. 



