EDWIN G. CONKLIN 81 



that there is no plan In nature and that death ends all 

 for the Individual and the race. 



Such a philosophy of despair Is not confined to 

 scientists but is found among all those who see In 

 human life only aimless suffering and evil with no 

 faith in progress and no hope for the future. Even 

 genial and lovable Mark Twain could write: 



A myriad of men are born ; they labor and sweat and strug- 

 gle for bread ; they squabble and scold and fight ; they scramble 

 for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon 

 them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down 

 their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from 

 them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden 

 of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year. At length 

 ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for re- 

 lease is in their place. It comes at last — the only unpoisoned 

 gift earth ever had for them — and they vanish from a world 

 where they were of no consequence; where they achieved noth- 

 ing ; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness ; 

 where they have left no sign that they have existed — a world 

 which will lament them for a day and forget them forever. 

 Then another myriad takes their place, and copies all they did, 

 and goes along the same profitless road, and vanishes as they 

 vanished — to make room for another and another and a million 

 more myriads to follow the same arid path through the same 

 desert and accomplish what the first myriad, and all the myriads 

 that came after it, accomplished — nothing. 



And yet, neither Mark Twain nor any other phi- 

 losopher of despair could avoid the instinct to work 

 for human betterment. The deeper currents of their 

 lives run counter to these eddies on the surface. La- 

 borious days and thoughtful nights reveal their faith 

 in human work and worth and progress, and their 

 despair Indicates only their discontent that progress is 

 so slow. 



