The Philosophy of Despair | Page 3

a matter of every-day occurrence. The "best laid
schemes o' mice and men " generally go wrong, no doubt, but this fact
has little to do with the Philosophy of Pessimism. It is natural for mice
and men to try again and to gain wisdom from failures. By the embers
of loss we count our gains."
The Pessimism of Youth we may first consider: In the transition from
childhood to manhood great changes take place in the nervous system.
There is for a time a period of confusion, in which the nerve cells are
acquiring new powers and new relations. This is followed by a time of
joy and exuberance, a sense of a new life in a new world, a feeling of
new power and adequacy, the thought that life is richer and better worth
living than the child could have supposed.
To this in turn comes a feeling of reaction. The joys of life have been a
thousand times felt before they come to us. We are but following part
of a cut-and-dried program, "performing actions and reciting speeches
made up for us centuries before we were born." The new power of
manhood and womanhood which seemed so wonderful find their close
limitations. As our own part in the Universe seems to shrink as we take
our place in it, so does the Universe itself seem to grow small, hard and
unsympathetic. Very few young men or young women of strength and
feeling fail to pass through a period of Pessimism. With some it is
merely an affectation caught from the cheap literature of decadence. It
then may find expression in imitation, as a few years ago the
sad-hearted youth turned down his collar in sympathy with the
"conspicuous loneliness" that took the starch out of the collar of Byron.
"The youth," says Zangwill, says bitter things about Life which Life
would have winced to hear had it been alive." 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. Equally unreasoning it may be, but far more wholesome.
But if action is impossible, the mood remains. And here arises the
despair of the highly educated. The purpose of knowledge is action.
But to refuse action is to secure time for the acquisition of more
knowledge. It is written in the very structure of the brain that each
impression of the senses must bring with it the impulse to act. To resist
this impulse is in turn to destroy it and to substitute a dull soul-ache in
its place. "Much study is a weariness of the flesh, and the experience of
all the ages brings only despair if it cannot be wrought into life. This
lack of balance between knowledge and achievement is the main
element in a form of ineffectiveness which with various others has been
uncritically called Degeneration. As the common pleasures which arise
from active life become impossible or distasteful, the desire for more
intense and novel joys comes in, and with the goading of the thirst for
these comes ever deeper discouragement.
At the best, the tendency of large knowledge, not vitalized by practical
experience, is to spend itself in cynical criticism, in futile efforts to tear
down without feeling the higher obligation to build up. For it is the
essence of this form of Pessimism to feel that there is nothing on earth
worth the trouble of building. The real is only a "sneering comment" on
the ideal, and man's life is too short to make any action worth while.
"With her the seed of Wisdom did I sow, And with mine own hands
wrought to make it grow; And this is all the harvest that I reap'd, 'I
come like water, and like wind I go.'"
One of the few things that we may know in life is this, that it is
impossible for man to know anything absolutely. The power of
reasoning is a mere "by-product in the process of Evolution." It is but
an instrument to help out the confusion of the senses, and it is
conditioned by the accuracy of the sense-perceptions with which it
deals. There is no appeal from experience to reason, for reason is
powerless to act save on the facts of human experience. Speculative
philosophy can teach us nothing. The senses and the reason are
intensely practical and all, our faculties are primarily adapted to

immediate purposes. Instruments such as these cannot serve to probe
the nature of the