PESSIMISM AND POSITIVE SCIENCE. 209 



by, there may be much enjoyment of a higher, though 

 a more tranquil sort. 



Life, in short, is adapted to happiness as well as to 

 misery. Nature is striving her utmost to produce happi- 

 ness, as well as to produce beauty. And how near to 

 a splendid success she has been ! At moments, we feel 

 convinced that Nature is aiming at human happiness ; 

 and we know it from our own experience. We feel 

 sometimes that, but for some slight hitch or hindrance 

 somewhere interposed by the malevolent powers, but for 

 something trivial not in the essence but the accidents of 

 things, a grand general success might have been made !' 

 Nay more, that Nature will yet succeed in her aims at 

 human happiness, if only men themselves will learn to 

 aid and second, by all the ways that Science and Wisdom 

 point out, the efforts that she is constantly and kindly 

 making in their behalf. Having derived so much satis- 

 faction from life, and so much good from society with all 

 its imperfections, we argue that much more is possible 

 yet, and that this problem of happiness, so far as we 

 have any right to expect it, may yet be solved satis- 

 factorily for man. But again comes the desponding 

 mood ; and in these alternations between exaggerated 

 optimism and exaggerated pessimism, man in these days 

 lives ; while it is only by duly checking the one against 

 the other, that a sober, balanced judgment which may 

 guide rational expectation and practice is possible. 



The pessimism of the philosophers in any case is not 

 a true gospel. It does not contain the true word of life 

 for man to-day in Europe ; and even if it were wholly 

 true, it would be the kind of truth which it does not 

 profit to insist upon. Unless with the diagnosis of the 

 disease there is also the accompanying prescription 

 supplied as by Buddha, there is no good end served by 



