Pessimism

“ Our neurotic peevishness, our imaginary grievances, our vanity and our pride, are shown up at such moments in their true light.
If complacent optimism appears an insolent falsifying of life's facts, a helpless pessimism appears a cowardly surrender to life's impertinence. ”

“ I take it that you are under the sway of a contemporary mood, that your position is an accidental phase of to-day's [Pg 121] materialism. Broadly, our quarrel is that of pessimism and optimism, only your pessimism is unconscious, which makes it the more dangerous to yourself. You are too sad to know that you are not happy or to care. ”

“ By the evening I had ignominiously broken down, and was plunged in the depths of an exasperated pessimism too deep even for tears, and would have believed myself the meanest and most miserable of mankind, but that everybody else, without exception, was even meaner and miserabler than myself. ”

“ What a splendid illustration of modern speculation and its willing victims who are so easily led into the "Paradise of Fools!"
[139]
GONE.
[140]
FOOLS.
But why mourn and brood over broken fortunes and the calamities of life? Why tarry in the doldrums of pessimism, with never a breeze to catch your limp and drooping sails and waft you on a joyous wave? Pessimism is the nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence, and human woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the progress of civilization. ”

“ His analysis of the worth of human life, as represented in this theory of pessimism, is the most passionate and terrible indictment of existence which has ever found expression. His sense of disenchantment is felt with such intensity, that it colours and distorts the whole fabric of his vision of life. ”

“ If we say that, at some future time, there will be no disease, misery, or poverty—that certainly is optimism. If we say that this daily life of ours, full of deprivation and sorrow, is not really so irreconcilable, but has in it something of immense value—is that pessimism? ”

“ But I have alluded to the doctrine in question, in order to show you to what lengths Pessimism, which is only a compendious expression of dissatisfaction with things in general, in other words with life, with society, and with mankind, can go, and how it has culminated in such disdain of them by poets, that they brush them aside as subjects unworthy of the Muse. ”

“ I shall enumerate, point by point, the themes for thanksgiving to-day:
“To-day is waging a great battle between Optimism and Pessimism. What is Optimism? That happy temperament which leads one to see all things in a hopeful light and in a joyful courage.
“What is Pessimism? It is that structure of mind which inclines one to see all events in a sad and discouraging way. Either disposition carried to its farthest limit is unphilosophical. Good is not all good; bad is not all bad. ”

“ In fact it constitutes the contribution that pessimism has made to social philosophy. It has taught us to open our eyes, to look the facts in the face, to listen to no siren song, to see and bravely acknowledge the truth of man's condition and his relation to the universe. ”

“ If, as I said, the optimism which is spiritual and ideal springs from the pessimism which is material and actual, so too does Hope grow from the bosom of Despair. This the picture shows. Crouching on the sphere of the world sits the blindfold figure of a woman, bending her ear to catch the music of one only string preserved on her lyre. ”

“ Then friends and members of the family turn with loathing from the atmosphere of chronic pessimism; the habitué has become a cuttlefish among his fellows, only emanating floods of inky misery. He wonders why things do not come his way; why business associates desert him and troubles assail him more and more. The truth is that imaginary troubles tend to become real, and fortune never smiles on a man who turns a sour face towards her. ”

“ Then you begin to say that there is nothing in them, and you try to fall back upon your old faith, which will have nothing more to do with you, and so you drop into pessimism. Yes! pessimism is the disease of the end of the century. ”

“ He realized, at last, that the arguments of pessimism were powerless to comfort him; ”

“ It is then that they declare that pessimism, a radical pessimism, is the truth; that existence, will, desire, are the chief evils, and that the supreme effort of science should be to cure us of them by delivering us from all our illusions ”

“ Is there a pessimism of the strong? An intellectual inclination for what in existence is hard, dreadful, angry, and problematic, emerging from what is healthy, from overflowing well being, from living existence to the full? ”

“ Suppose that in looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery, of old age, of wickedness and pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he yields to the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread, ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus adds to the mass M of mundane phenomena, independent of his subjectivity, the subjective complement x, which makes of the whole an utterly black picture illumined by no gleam of good. Pessimism completed, verified by his moral reaction and the deed in which this ends, is true beyond a doubt. ”

“ And, finally, there is the Atheistic Pessimist, who has abandoned the notion of an Intelligence at the helm of the Universe, and believes only in a blind Force, irresponsible for all the misery and crime of which He—or rather It—is the cause. For all these varied kinds of Pessimism there seem to be two quite distinct sources,—a good and noble, and a bad and base one. ”

“ Such are some of the motives that give genuine meaning to modern pessimism. This instability of all ideals is the greatest danger to which idealism can be subject. And the problem is not one of mere theory, nor yet even of poetic emotion alone. The problem is one of daily life. We choose some fashion of life in the morning, and we reject it before night. Our devotional moments demand that all life shall be devotional; our merry moments that all life shall be merry; our heroic moments that all life shall be lived in defiance of some chosen enemy. ”

“ The terms "pessimism" and "optimism," like most modern terms, are unmeaning. But if they can be used in any vague sense as meaning something, we may say that in this great fact pessimism is the very basis of optimism. The man who destroys himself creates the universe. ”

“ You may say such ideas bring gloominess, pessimism into our lives. What difference does it make if we become a little gloomy, or if we become pessimistic? What has your optimism given us? What do the passing joys bring us? They bring us nothing but reaction. So-called optimism does not land us anywhere. It rather leads us into complex situations and conditions. ”

“ Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, though it takes the fine edge off of whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens, at which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. ”

“ Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life. ”

“ Could modern poetry free itself from that reflective tendency in which we have found its most prominent characteristic, the pessimism could disappear with the criticism of life. But this is impossible. Omit part of our lyric poetry, some of our comedy and of our satire, and the rest of our best nineteenth century poetic work is a more or less conscious struggle with pessimism. ”

“ Criticism of the pessimism which has prevailed hitherto. The want of the eudaemonological standpoint, as a last abbreviation of the question: what is the purpose of it all? The reduction of gloom. Our pessimism: the world has not the value which we believed it to have, our faith itself has so increased our instinct for research that we are compelled to say this today. In the first place, it seems of less value: at first it is felt to be of less value, only in this sense are we pessimists, that is to say, with the will to acknowledge this. ”

“ It is a humiliating fact that, notwithstanding our avaricious greed for novelties, we are forced, when sincere, to confess that "les anciens out tout dit," and that it is probable the contending schools of thought have always held the same relative positions they do now: optimism glittering in the front ranks as a deservedly popular favorite; pessimism speaking with a still, persistent voice to those who, unluckily for themselves, have the leisure and the intelligence to attend. ”

“ Out-and-out pessimists accuse him of distorting human nature by attributing to it imaginary graces and virtues: but does not their unbending pessimism distort it in another direction by showing to us, under the pretext of being truthful, only its meannesses and its horrors?—From PELLISSIER, Le Mouvement littéraire au XIXe siècle. ”

“ I think it worth noting how this optimist was acquainted with pain. It will seem strange only to the superficial. The disease of pessimism springs never from real troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to bear well. ”

“ We are roused sometimes by a philosopher who professes pessimism or optimism, to ask and to try to answer such questions. The answers, we know, are apt to be painfully discordant. [Pg 240] Is the world on the whole a scene of misery, of restless desires, proving that we are miserable now, and doomed never to obtain satisfaction? is it our only wisdom to give up the will to live; to hope that all this visible and tangible scenery is so much illusion, and to aspire to sink into Nirvana? ”

“ With others Pessimism has deeper roots and finds its expression in the poetry or philosophy of real despair.
This adolescent Pessimism cannot be wrought into action. The mood disappears when real action is demanded. The Pessimism of youth vanishes with the coming of life. Through the rush of the new century, the fad of the drooping spirit has already given way to the fad of the strenuous life. ”

“ And the elegant voice of the artistic objector floating behind: "Apré vous le dèluge." A wholesale abusing of the tendencies of the age has ever proved, for the superior mind, an inexhaustible source of relief. Few things breed such inward comfort as the contemplation of one's own pessimism—few things produce such discomfort as the remembrance of our neighbour's optimism. ”

“ No, Lady Chiltern, I am not a Pessimist. Indeed I am not sure that I quite know what Pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next. ”

“ It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps pathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas. ”

“ At first sight it would seem that the pessimist encourages improvement. But in reality it is a singular truth that the era in which pessimism has been cried from the house-tops is also that in which almost all reform has stagnated and fallen into decay. ”

“ Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naïve humanism: the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us either happy or unhappy. ”

“ But the pessimism of one who sees the simple life fading out, the ancient quietude invaded, the country caught in the feelers of the town, is not a real pessimism at all, or rather it is a pessimism which results from a deficiency of imagination, and is only a matter of personal taste, perhaps of personal belatedness. ”

“ This pessimism is the keynote of our age as a delight in mere existence was of the classic ages, and ultra piety of the mediaeval period. Every man of culture feels this sense of irritating discomfort which he ascribes to some slight, casual cause, inevitably the wrong one, unless he analyzes his feelings with unusual care—it leads him to criticise and harshly condemn the varying phases of our modern social life. ”

“ Sorrow and pessimism are indeed, in a sense, opposite things, since sorrow is founded on the value of something, and pessimism upon the value of nothing. And in practice we find that those poets or political leaders who come from the people, and whose experiences have really been searching and cruel, are the most sanguine people in the world. These men out of the old agony are always optimists; they are sometimes offensive optimists. ”

“ Without one touch of pessimism or melancholic depression—the result of fitful failure—they can paint a work of realism that, hung side by side with their never-to-be-realised ideal, would make the latter the subject of scoff and mocking derision. ”

“ This is pessimism that overleaps itself. The outcome of self -analyzing romanticism is the determination to build afresh a world that shall be nobler than this poor world of decaying passive emotions. ”