PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM.

A Hungarian doctor under the pseudonym of Max Nordau has written a book to show that the leading races of the world are degenerating physically, mentally, and morally. The doctrine taught is that the European peoples have not only reached the summit of civilization, but passed over it, and are now on the downward road. The work is spoken of as remarkable for its scientific knowledge, its deductive force, and its trenchant criticisms. Music and the drama, literature and painting are all described as affording evidence of a universal craving for some new sensation. There is a craze for excitement which causes over-stimulation, with weariness and emptiness as its necessary reaction. This reaction is further illustrated by the nature of modern diseases and crimes. Rampant hysteria among men and women and more frequent suicides are among the symptoms that the highest civilization the world has ever seen is growing morbid. This writer is only one of a numerous clan to which Dr. C. H. Pearson refers in a recent striking article in which he takes modern pessimism for granted, and discusses its causes. It is no doubt true that what Dr. Pearson calls "a strain of pessimism" is noticeable in recent literature. The writings of such influential men as Ibsen, Tolstoi, and Zola are pervaded by it, but they are not alone. If Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" be compared with "Locksley Hall Forty Years After" the shadow of disappointed hope makes the sky gloomy. This is a typical case. According to Dr. Pearson the failure to realize ideals is crushing out the element of hope. The best part of all socialistic programmes includes the elimination of crime and poverty from the world, but is this likely to be carried out? Even the new heavens and the new earth of Bellamy make up a picture that is not only out of reach, but painfully incomplete. Along with this the fatalism of science with its doctrine of heredity is saddening to sensitive minds. For the stern and immutable decrees which once darkened both the present and future of many religious minds it has substituted others, established in nature and from which there is no escape. Yet further on the same side there are the failures of social and political prophecies. Cobden and his colleagues expected free-trade to speedily become universal and to promote the brotherhood of man. The first international Exhibition was supposed to be the morning star of perpetual peace. The realization of these sanguine anticipations seems to be further away than ever, and hope of social regeneration along those lines has given place to despair.
It may fairly be questioned whether Dr. Pearson's generalization is strictly correct. Observers like those who have been referred to are apt to limit their field of vision. Admitting that what obtrudes itself upon their notice wears the hue they describe, it may be that they miss what is even more significant. The cultivated classes, if they are civilization's crown and climax, are far from constituting the whole of humanity. They are most in evidence because they are on the surface, but they are not alone to be considered. They are more distinctly articulate than any other, but how about the larger masses whose voices are not so distinctly heard ? Among them another spirit is moving, and a counter-current can plainly be discerned. Nearly all the great movements of modern times have made for their advantage. Through and through their ranks the blessings of better education, larger political freedom and power, together with more comfort and consequently greater joy in living, have spread and are still spreading. For them, therefore, the progress already achieved is exhilarating, and the future, if only they turn their opportunities to good account, is radiant with promise. Here the tendency is rather optimistic than otherwise. The very consciousness of ability to modify circumstances and environments produces a degree of cheerfulness, and if it is qualified by hard experiences encountered in the struggle for daily bread there is a conviction that a brighter era has dawned. Even as it is the great body of the people of civilized nations who occupy the space between the wealthy and leisured and what General Booth calls the submerged tenth, are better taught, better fed, better clothed, and better housed than they were fifty years ago. They are more intelligent, their recreations are purer, and they lead happier as well as healthier lives. Pessimism among them is rarer than in the days when Charles Kingsley wrote "Roland Yorke," and the eagerness with which schemes for social amelioration are listened to and believed in is of itself proof that an opposite tendency prevails.
Dr. Pearson's conclusion is strongly at variance with his premises. He intimates that "of the two great inspirations which society needs, and which it is impossible to weigh out evenly in the balances, the pessimism which accepts death and defeat beforehand may be even more desirable as a permanent force than the optimism which sees the first presage of victory and animates for the charge that decides the fight." As a permanent force it cannot be more desirable, for the very reason that it is self-destructive, whereas its opposite is self-perpetuating. The simple fact is that pessimism is not force at all, but weakness. It is an ulcer, and not healthy muscle. So long as it is true that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine," the optimist will have the advantage. Of more importance, however, than a comparison between the merits of the two things is the question which of them the circumstances justify. The pessimism to which so much attention is paid is largely the product of artificial, sensuous, self-indulgent life. Ennui, weariness, lassitude, despondency, all go together. For this kind of thing nature and natural laws provide a certain remedy. While there is no cure for a pessimistic disposition, a pessimistic judgment may be corrected in several ways. Enlarging the range of observation and altering the standpoint is one of these. If the teachings of history are worth anything they convey an emphatic caution against forming hasty and partial opinions. Scarcely any better warning against adopting doleful views can be desired than is furnished by a comparison of present with some former times. If 1893 is a depressing time what must 1793 have been? It was the year when Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were guillotined, which witnessed the assassination of Marat, the worship of the Goddess of Reason, and was a kind of overture to the Reign of Terror.
It is said that religious faith and comfort are waning now, and that the hope of the future has become more shadowy. A hundred years ago on November 23, according to Sir A. Alison, "atheism in France reached its extreme point by a decree of the municipality ordering the immediate closing of all the Churches and placing the whole of the priests in a state of surveillance. . . . The services of religion were now universally abandoned. . . . The village bells were silent, Sunday was obliterated; infancy entered the world without a blessing, age left it without a hope." If the comparison be carried further back the contrast becomes still more vivid. Those who inhabit what are called the upper circles may feel, as their predecessors have done, that the pressure upon them becomes steadily greater. The invasion of what they have held to be their peculiar privileges gives them uneasiness, and the impossibility of resisting the advancing wave causes certain well-grounded forebodings.
Nevertheless, this is only part, and a small part of the case. Despite Ibsenism, Zolaism, and the other isms of that ilk — despite the manifold evils which are attendant upon social convulsions and industrial disturbances, which really only mark the evolution of a state of things vastly different from that which has prevailed in the past— there is hope for the future of humanity, and the modern prophets of evil will be found false prophets like those of yore.


 South Australian Register 28 December 1893,