228 



ORDINARY MEETING, March 3, 1884. 

 The Rtqht Honourable A. S. Atrton, in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the fol- 

 lowing addition to the Library was announced : — 



"Proceedings of the United States Geological and Geo- 

 graphical Survey." (Ten volumes.) From the Same. 



The following paper was then read by the Author : — 



ON PESSIMISM, AND ITS MODERN CHAMPIONS. 

 By W. P. James, Esq. 



1. nnHE present age is one of almost unbounded toleration. 

 JL Especially is this the case in the world of literature. 

 It is the fashion to speak with bated breath and formal cour- 

 tesy of the most fantastic and extravagant creeds. Both sides 

 of great questions are discussed in magazines, often with a 

 total absence of earnestness, and with the cruel flippancy of 

 the ready writer. The evil results of this idle spirit of curiosity 

 are too patent to requii'e notice. The mind accustomed to 

 this stimulating process acquires the habit of playing with 

 subjects which it is too indolent to take up seriously. Amongst 

 our cultivated classes, it is possible that many readers are 

 acquainted, in this superficial way, with Pessimism. They 

 may have seen a favourable account of it, which was written, 

 perhaps, in honest ignorance of its darker and more repulsive 

 features. If such be the case, in common fairness, they cannot 

 object to a further discussion of this extraordinary phase of 

 nineteenth-century thought. Nor, unfortunately, does the 

 question only concern the educated sections of our complex 

 social fabric. It is astonishing, in these days, how speculative 

 difficulties, which take their rise in the bleak and icy moun- 

 tain-peaks of metaphysics, filter down to the lower strata of 

 literature, and come to the surface again in the hateful pro- 

 ductions of the atheistic propaganda. The object of this 



