THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



tween its two worlds ; it describes this world as a " vale of 

 tears," and the next as a glorious city of joy and hap- 

 piness. This view is a conspicuous feature in most 

 of the dualistic religions, and has still a considerable 

 influence, both practically and theoretically, on the 

 minds of educated people. ' 



The founder of systematic optimism was Gottfried 

 Leibnitz, whose philosophy sought to achieve an in- 

 genious harmony between divergent systems, but is 

 really a form of dynamism, or a monism somewhat akin 

 to the energism of Ostwald. Leibnitz gave a compen- 

 dious statement of his system in his Monadology (1^14). 

 He taught that the world consists of an infinite number 

 of monads (which almost correspond to our psychic 

 atoms), but this pluralism was converted into a monism 

 by making God, as the central monad, bind all to- 

 gether in a substantial unity. In his Theodicy (1710) 

 he taught that God (the "all-wise, all-good, and al- 

 mighty creator of the world") had with perfect con- 

 sciousness created "the best of all possible worlds"; 

 that his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power are seen 

 everywhere in the pre-established harmony of things; 

 but that the individual human being, and humanity 

 taken as a whole, have only a limited capacity for 

 development. The man who knows the real features 

 of the world, who has honestly confronted the tragic 

 struggle for life that rules throughout living nature, 

 who has sympathy for the infinite sum of misery and 

 want of every kind in the life of men, can scarcely 

 understand how an acute and informed thinker like 

 Leibnitz could entertain such optimism as this. It 

 would be more intelligible in the case of a one-sided and 

 nebulous metaphysician like Hegel, who held that "all 

 that is real' is rational and all that is rational is real." 



Pessimism is the direct opposite of systematic opti- 

 mism. While the one holds the universe to be the best, 



no 



