be Philosophy
of Despair
By Babib Starr Jordan

ARTES
LIBRARY
1837)
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E-PLURIBUS-UNUM
TUEBOR
SI-QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOEN
CIRCUMSPICE
The Philosophy of Despair
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​he Philosophy
of Despair : By
David Starr Jordan
Paul Elder and Morgan Shepard
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Copyright, 1902
by DAVID STARR JORDAN
Entered at Stationer's Hall
London
PRINTED BY THE STANLEY-TAYLOR COMPANY, SAN FRANCISCO
37.
TO
JOHN MAXSON STILLMAN
IN TOKEN OF GOOD CHEER
66
A darkening sky and a whitening sea,
And the wind in the palm trees tall;
Soon or late comes a call for me,
Down from the mountain or up from the sea,
Then let me lie where I fall.
And a friend may write - for friends there be,
On a stone from the gray sea wall,
Jungle and town and reef and sea-
I loved God's Earth and His Earth loved me,
Taken for all in all.”
น
oday is your day and mine, the only day
we have, the day in which we play our
part. What our part may signify in the
great whole, we may not understand, but
we are here to play it, and now is our
time. This we know, it is a part of
action, not of whining. It is a part
of love, not cynicism. It is for
us to express love in terms of
human helpfulness. This
we know, for we have
learned from sad experi-
ence that any other
course of life leads
toward decay
and waste.
€

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
THE BUBBLES OF SÁKI.
From Fitzgerald's exquisite version of the
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, I take the fol-
lowing quatrains which may serve as a text for
what I have to say:
So when the angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And offering you his cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your lips to quaff, you shall not
shrink.
Why, if the soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the air of Heaven ride,
Wert not a shame-wert not a shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?
"Tis but a tent where takes his one-day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest t;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.
And fear not lest Existence, closing your
Account, and mine, shall know the like no
more;
The Eternal Sáki from that bowl hath pour'd
Millions of bubbles like us, and will
and will pour.
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
:

When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the world shall
last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds
As the Sev'n Seas shall heed a pebble-cast.
A moment's halt-a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the waste,
And lo!—the phantom caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from-O, make haste!
* *
There was the door to which I found no key;
There was the veil through which I could not
see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—and then no more of Thee and
Me.
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust
Like foolish prophets forth; their words to
scorn
Are scatter'd and their mouths are stopt with
dust.
*
*
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it
grow;
And this was all the harvest that I reap'd—
"I come like water, and like wind I go.
""
Ah Love, could thou and I with Him con-
spire
To grasp
grasp this
sorry scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits-and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart's desire!
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again-
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same garden—and for one in
vain!
And when like her, O Sáki, you shall pass
Among the guests, star-scattered on the grass,
And in your blissful errand reach the spot
Where I made one-turn down an empty
glass!
And, again, in another poem from Carmen
Silva's Roumanian folk-songs:
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
HOPELESS.
Into the mist I gazed, and fear came on me,
Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun.
We sat beneath our tent;
Then he that hath no hope drew near us there,
And sat him down by us.
We asked him: "Hast thou seen the plains,
the mountains?”
And he made answer: "I have seen them
all."
And then his cloak he showed us, and his
shirt,
Torn was the shirt, there, close above the
heart,
Pierced was the breast, there, close above the
heart-
The heart was gone.
And yet he trembled not, the while we
looked,
And sought the heart, the heart that was not
there.
He let us look. And he that had no hope
Smiled, that we grew so pale, and
sang us
songs.
Then we did envy him, that he could sing
Without a heart to suffer what he sang.
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
.!
3

And when he went, he cast his cloak about
him,
And those that met him, they could never
guess
How that his shirt was torn about the heart,
And that his breast was pierced above the
heart,
And that the heart was gone.
I gazed into the mist, and fear came on me,
Then said the mist: "I weep for the lost sun.
9
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
4
This poem of Omar and of Fitzgerald is
perhaps our best expression of the sadness and
the grandeur of insoluble problems. It is the
sweetness of philosophical sorrow which has
no kinship with misery or distress. In the
strains of the saddest music the soul finds the
keenest delight. The same sweet, sorrow-
ful pleasure is felt in the play of the mind
about the riddles which it cannot solve.
In the presence of the infinite problem of
life, the voice of Science is dumb, for Science
is the coördinate and corrected expression of
human experience, and human experience
must stop with the limitations of human life.
Man was not present "When the founda-
tions of the Earth were laid," and beyond
the certainty that they were laid in wisdom
and power, man can say little about them.
Man finds in the economy of nature "no
trace of a beginning; no prospect of an end!"
He
may feel sure, with Hutton, that "time
is as long as space is wide." But he cannot
conceive of space as actually without limit,
nor can he imagine any limiting conditions.
He cannot think of a period before time
began, nor of a state in which time shall be
no more. The mind fails before the idea of
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
time's eternal continuity. So time becomes
to man merely the sequence of the earthly
events in which he and his ancestors have
taken part. Even thus limited it is sadly im-
mortal, while man's stay on the earth is but
of "few days and full of trouble.' "Oh, but
the long, long while this world shall last!"
or as the grim humorist puts it, "we shall
be a long time dead."
Though the meaning of time, space, exist-
ence lies beyond our reach, yet some sort of
solution of the infinite problem the human
heart demands. We find in life a power for
action, limited though this power may be.
Life is action, and action is impossible if de- X
void of motive or hope.
It is my purpose here to indicate some
part of the answer of Science to the Philoso-
phy of Despair. Direct reply Science has
none. We cannot argue against a singer or a
poet. The poet sings of what he feels, but
Science speaks only of what we know. We
feel infinity, but we cannot know it, for to the
highest human wisdom the ultimate truths
of the universe are no nearer than to the child.
Science knows no ultimate truths. These
are beyond the reach of man, and all that
11

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
man knows must be stated in terms of his ex-
perience. But as to human experience and
conduct, Science has a word to say.
Therefore Science can speak of the causes
and results of Pessimism. It can touch the
practical side of the riddle of life by asking
certain questions, the answers to which lie
within the province of human experience.
Among these are the following:
Why is there a " Philosophy of Despair?
Can Despair be wrought into healthful life?
In what part of the Universe are you and
what are you doing?
Personal despair or discouragement may
rise from failure of strength or failure of
plans. This is a matter of every-day occur-
rence. 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 con-
sider:
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 ac-
66
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
quiring 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 fol-
lowing part of a cut-and-dried program, "per-
forming 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 Zang-
13

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
will, “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.
be
This adolescent Pessimism cannot
wrought into action. The mood disappears
when real action is demanded. The Pessim-
ism 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 un-
reasoning it may be, but far more wholesome.
But if action is impossible, the mood re-
mains. 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 im-
pulse 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
14
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
main element in a form of ineffectiveness
which with various others has been un-
critically called Degeneration. As the com-
mon 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 knowl-
edge, 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 build-
ing. The real is only a "sneering comment"
on the ideal, and man's life is too short to
make any action worth while.
ཅུ། །
"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
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
t
""
reasoning is a mere "by-product in the pro-
cess 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 infinite. But no other
instruments lie within reach of man. If we
cannot "reach the heart of reality" by reason,
what indeed can we reach? What right have
we to know or to believe? And if we can know
or believe nothing, what should we try to do?
And how indeed can we do anything? Every
man's fate is determined by his heredity and
his environment. In the Arab proverb he is
born with his fate bound to his neck. In the
course of life we must do that which has been
already cut out for us. Our parts were laid
for us long before we appeared to take them.
He is indeed a strong man who can vary the
cast or give a different cue to those who fol-

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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
low. Nature is no respecter of persons, and
to suppose that any man is in any degree "the
arbiter of his own destiny" is pure illusion.
We are thrust forth into life, against our will.
Against our will we are forced to leave it.
We find ourselves, as has been said, "on a
steep incline, where we can yeer but little to
the left or right"; whichever way we move
we fall finally to the very bottom. The fires
we kindle die away in coals; castles we build
vanish before our eyes. The river sinks in
the sands of the desert. The character we
form by our efforts disintegrates in spite of
our effort. If life be spared we find ourselves
once again helpless children. Whichever way
we turn we may describe the course of life
in metaphors of discouragement.
To the pessimistic philosopher the progress
of the race is also mere illusion. There is
no progress, only adaptation. Every creature
must fit itself to its environment or pass away.
The beast fits the forest for the same reason
that the river fits its bed. Life is only pos-
sible under the rare conditions in which life
is not destroyed.
In such fashion we may ring the changes of
the despair of philosophy. If we are to take
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
up
the threads of life by the farther end only,
we shall never begin to live, for only those
which lie next us can ever be in our hand.
To grasp at ultimate truth is to be forever
empty-handed. To reach for the ultimate
end of action is never to begin to act.
Deeper and more worthy of respect is the
sadness of science. The effort "to see things
as they really are," to get out of all make-be-
lieve and to secure that "absolute veracity of
thought" without which sound action is im-
possible does not always lead to hopefulness.
There is much to discourage in human
history,-in the facts of human life. The
common man, after all the ages, is still
very
common. He is ignorant, reckless, unjust,
selfish, easily misled. All public affairs bear
the stamp of his weakness. Especially is
this shown in the prevalence of destructive
strife. The boasted progress of civilization
is dissolved in the barbarism of war. Whether
glory or conquest or commercial greed be
war's purpose, the ultimate result of war is
death. Its essential feature is the slaughter
of the young, the brave, the ambitious, the
hopeful, leaving the weak, the sickly, the
discouraged to perpetuate the race. Thus
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
all militant nations become decadent ones.
Thus the glory of Rome, her conquests and
her splendor of achievement, left the Romans
at home a nation of cowards, and such they
are to this day. For those who survive are not
the sons of the Romans, but of the slaves,
scullions, the idlers and camp-followers whom
the years of Roman glory could not use and
did not destroy. War blasts and withers all
that is worthy in the works of man.
That there seems no way out of this is the
cause of the sullen despair of so many scholars
of Continental Europe. The millennium is
not in sight. It is farther away than fifty
years ago. The future is narrowing down
and men do not care to forecast it. It is
enough to grasp what we may of the present.
We hear "the ring of the hammer on the
scaffold." "Let us eat and drink, for tomor-
row we die. "The sad kings," in Watson's
phrase, can only pile up fuel for their own
destruction, and the failure of force will
release the unholy brood which force has
caused to develop. The winds of freedom
are tainted by sulphurous exhalations. In all
our merry-making we find with Ibsen that
"there is a corpse on board." The mask is

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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
falling only to show the Death's head there
concealed. Aristocracy, Democracy, An-
archy, Empire, the history of politics, is the
eternal round of the Dance of Death.
66
When we look at human nature in detail
we find more of animal than of angel, and the
veracity of thought and action," which is
the choicest gift of Science, is lost in thehappy-
go-lucky movement of the human mob. "To
see things as they really are" is the purpose
of the philosophy of Pessimism in the hands
of its worthiest exponents. But we know
what is, and that alone, even were such knowl-
edge possible, is not to know the truth. The
higher wisdom seeks to find the forces at
work to produce that which now is. The
present time is the meeting time of forces; the
present fact their temporary product. To
the philosophy of Evolution, "every meanest
day is the conflux of two eternities.'
Each
meanest fact is the product of the world-
forces that lie behind it; each meanest man
the resultant of the vast powers, alive in hu-
man nature, struggling since life began. And
these forces, omnipotent and eternal, will
never cease their work.
To the philosophy of Pessimism, the child
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
is a mere human larva, weak, perverse, dis-
agreeable, the heir of mortality, with all
manner of "defects of doubt and taints of
blood," gathered in the long experience of
its wretched parentage.
With
In the more hopeful view of Evolution
the child exists for its possibilities. The
huge forces within have thrown it to the sur-
face of time. They will push it onward to
development, which may not be much in the
individual case, but beyond it all lie the pos-
sibilities of its race. Inherent in it is the
power to rise, to form its own environment,
to stand at last superior to the blind forces by
which the human will was made.
this thought is sure to come, in some degree,
the certainty that the heart of the Universe
is sound, that though there be so many of us
in the world, each must have his place, and
each at last "be somehow needful to infin-
ity." We can see that each least creature has
its need for being. The present justifies the
past. It is the transcendent future which
renders the commonplace present possible.
The "dragons of the prime,
That tore each other in the slime,"
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
5
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lived and fought that we their descendants
may realize ourselves in "lives made beautiful
and sweet," through all unlikeness to dragons.
It was necessary that every foot of soil in
Europe should be crimsoned by blood, wan-
tonly shed, to bring the relative peace and
tolerance of the civilization of Europe today.
It always "needs that offense must come" to
bring about the better condition in which each
particular offense shall be done away. For
the evolution of life is not in straight lines
from lower to higher things, but runs rather
in wavering spirals. It is the resultant of
stress and storm. The evil and failure which
darken the present are necessary to the illu-
mination of the future. Time is long. "God
tosses back to man his failures" one by one,
and gives him time and strength to try again.
According to Schopenhauer, we move
across the stage of life stung by appetite and
goaded by desire, in pain unceasing, the sole
respite from pain, the instant in which desire
is lost in satisfaction. To do
To do away with desire
is to destroy pain, but it also destroys exist-
ence. Desire is lost where the "mouth is
stopped with dust," and with death only
comes relief from pain.
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
Thus the Pessimist tells us that "the only
reality in life is pain." But surely this is not
the truth. He who knows no reality save
appetite has never known life at all. The
realities in life are love and action; not desire,
but the exercise of our appointed functions.
Action follows sensation. The more we
have to do the more accurate must be our sen-
sations, the greater the hold environment has
upon us.
Broader activities demand better
knowledge of our surroundings. Greater sen-
sitiveness to external things means greater
capacity for pain, hence greater suffering,
when the natural channels of effort are closed.
Thus arises the hope for nothingness in
which many sensitive souls have indulged.
With no surroundings at all, or with environ-
ment that never varies, there could be no
sense-perception. To see nothing, to feel
nothing—there could be no demand for
action. With no failure of action there could
be no weariness. From the varied environ-
ment of earthly life spring, through adapta-
tion, the varied powers and varied sensibili-
ties, susceptibilities to joy and pain as well as
the rest. The greater the sensitiveness the
greater the capacity for suffering. Hence the
23

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
}
"quenching of desire," the "turning toward
Nirvana," the desire to escape from the hide-
ous bustle of a world in which we are able to
take no part, is a natural impulse with the soul
which feels but cannot or will not act.
"Can it be, O Christ in Heaven,
That the highest suffer most,
That the strongest wander farthest
And most hopelessly are lost?—
That the mark of rank in Nature
Is capacity for pain,
And the anguish of the singer
Marks the sweetness of the strain?"
That this must be so rests in the very
nature of things. The most perfect instru-
ment is one most easily thrown out of adjust-
ment. The most highly developed organism
is the most exactly fitted to its functions, the
one most deeply injured when these func-
tions are altered or suppressed.
Man's sensations and power to act must go
together. Man can know nothing that he
cannot somehow weave into action. If he
fails to do this in one form or another, it is
through limitations he has placed on him-
self. Man cannot suffer for lack of "more
{
24
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:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
worlds to conquer," because his power to
conquer worlds is the product of his own
past life and his own past needs. To weave
knowledge into action is the antidote for
ennui. To plan, to hope, to do, to accom-
plish the full measure of our powers, what-
ever they may be, is to turn away from Nir-
vana to real life. A useful man, a helpful
man, an active man in any sense, even though
his activity be misdirected or harmful, is
always a hopeful man.
The feeling that "the only reality in life
is pain," is the sign not of philosophical
acuteness but of bodily under-vitalization.
The nervous system is too feeble for the body
it has to move. To act is to make the en-
vironment your servant. Its pressure is no
longer pain but joy. The concessions which
life has made to time and space are the source
of life's glory and power.
The function of the nervous system is to
carry from the environment to the brain the
impressions of truth, that action may be true
and safe. Pain and pleasure are both inci-
dental to sound action. The one drives, the
other coaxes us toward the path of wisdom.
If pain is in excess of joy in our experience,
25

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​会
​a
**
Thus les
The Philosophy of Despair ::
it is because we have wandered from the path
of normal activity. By right-doing, we
mean that action which makes for "abundance
of life," and abundance of life means fulness
of joy. "Though life be sad, yet there's joy
in the living it" was the word of the ancient
Greeks, "who ever with a frolic welcome
took the Thunder and the Sunshine.'
""
The life of man is dynamic, not static; not
a condition but a movement. "Not enjoy-
ment and not sorrow" is its end or justifica-
tion.It is a rush of forces, an evolution
towards greater activities and higher adjust-
ment, the growth of a stability which shall
be ever more unstable. This onward motion
is recognized in the pessimistic philosophy of
Von Hartmann, as a movement towards ever
greater possibilities of pain. With him life
is "the supreme blunder of the blind uncon-
scious force" which created man and de-
veloped him as the prey of ever-increasing
suffering.
But the power to enjoy has grown in like
degree, and both joy and pain are subordi-
nated to the power to act. The human will,
the power to do, is the real end of the stress
and struggle of the ages. However limited
L
*
6.
مرم

', ཝིཏ;
રાત નો
"
ལྷ
26

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
i..
its individual action, the will finds its place
among the gigantic factors in the evolution
of life. It is not the present, but the ultimate,
which is truth. Not the unstable and tem-
porary fact but the boundless clashing forces
which endlessly throw truths to the surface.
Another source of Pessimism is the reac-
tion from unearned pleasures and from spuri-
ous joys. It is the business of the senses to
translate realities, to tell the truth about us
in terms of human experience. Every real
pleasure has its cost in some form of nervous
activity. What we get we must earn, if it
is to be really ours. Long ago, in the infancy
of civilization, man learned that there were
drugs in Nature, cell products of the growth
or transformation of "our brother organisms,
the plants," by whose agency pain was turned
to pleasure. By the aid of these outside influ-
ences he could clear "today of past regrets
and future fears," and strike out from the
sad "calendar unborn tomorrow and dead
yesterday."
That the joys thus produced had no real
objective existence, man was not long in find-
ing out, and it soon appeared that for each
subjective pleasure which had no foundation
27

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
in action, there was a subjective sorrow, like-
wise unrelated to external things.
But that the pains more than balanced the
joys, and that the indulgence in unearned de-
ceptions destroyed sooner or later all capacity
for enjoyment, man learned more slowly.
The joys of wine, of opium, of tobacco and
of all kindred drugs are mere tricks
upon the
nervous system. In greater or less degree
they destroy its power to tell the truth, and
in proportion as they have seemed to bring
subjective happiness, so do they bring at last
subjective horror and disgust. And this utter
soul-weariness of drugs has found its way into
literature as the expression of Pessimism.
"The City of the Dreadful Night," for
example, does not find its inspiration in the
misery of selfish, rushing, crowded London.
It is the effect of brandy on the sensitive mind
of an exquisitive poet. Not the world, but
the poet, lies in the "dreadful night” of self-
inflicted insomnia. Wherever these subject-
ive nerve influences find expression in litera-
ture it is either in an infinite sadness, or in
hopeless gloom. James Thompson says in
the "City of the Dreadful Night":
28
:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
"The city is of night but not of sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the weary
brain.
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep-
A night seems termless hell. This dread-
ful strain
Of thought and consciousness which never
ceases,
Or which some moment's stupor but in-
creases."
"This Time which crawleth like a monstrous
snake,
Wounded and slow and very venomous.
* * *
"
"Lo, as thus prostrate in the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's
sad tears
But why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years!'
"Because a cold rage seizes one at times
To show the bitter, old and wrinkled
truth,
Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles
False dreams, false hopes, false masks and
modes of youth."
1

29

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
All this, alas, is the inevitable physical out-
come of the attempt to-
“Divorce old, barren Reason from my house
To take the daughter of the vine to spouse."
All subjective happiness due to nerve stimu-
lation is of the nature of mania. In
propor-
tion to its intensity is the certainty that it will
be followed by its subjective reaction, the
“Nuit Blanche," the "dark brown taste," by
the experience of "the difference in the morn-
ing." The only melancholy drugs can drive
away is that which they themselves produce.
It is folly to use as a source of pleasure that
which lessens activity and vitiates life.
There are many other causes which induce
depression of mind and disorder of nerve.
Where nerve decay is associated with genius
and culture, we shall find some phase of the
philosophy of Pessimism. In fact, cheerful-
ness is not primarily a result of right think-
ing, but rather the expression of sound nerves
and normal vegetative processes. Most of the
philosophy of despair, the longing to know
the meaning of the unattainable, vanishes with
active out-of-door life and the consequent
flow of good health. Even a dose of quinine

30

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
may convert to hopefulness when both ser-
mons and arguments fail.
For a degree of optimism is a necessary
accompaniment of health. It is as natural as
animal heat, and is the mental reflex of it.
Pessimism arises from depression or irrita-
tion or failure of the nerves. It is a symptom
of lowered vitality expressed in terms of the
mind.
There is a philosophical Pessimism, as I
have already said, over and above all merely
physical conditions, and not dependent on
them. But the melancholy Jacques of our
ordinary experience either uses some narcotic
or stimulant to excess, or else has trouble with
his liver or kidneys. "Liver complaint," says
Zangwill," is the Prometheus myth done into
modern English." Already historical criti-.7
cism has shown that the Bloody Assizes had
its origin in disease of the bladder, and most
forms of vice and cruelty resolve themselves
into decay of the nerves. It is natural that
degeneration should bring discouragement
and disgust. But whatever the causes of Pes-
simism, whether arising in speculative phi-
losophy in nervous disease or in personal fail-
ure, it can never be wrought into sound and
31

:: The Philosophy of Despair
helpful life. To live effectively implies the
belief that life is worth living, and no one
who leads a worthy life has ever for a moment
doubted this.
Such an expression as "worth living" has in
fact no real meaning. To act and to love are
the twin functions of the human body and
soul. To refuse these functions is to make
one's self incapable of them. It is in a sense
to die while the body is still alive. To refuse
these functions is to make misery out of ex-
istence, and a life of ennui is doubtless not
"worth living."
The philosophy of life is its working hy-
pothesis of action. To hold that all effort is
futile, that all knowledge is illusion, and that
no result of the human will is worth the pain
of calling it into action, is to cut the nerve of
effectiveness. In proportion as one really
believes this, he becomes a cumberer of the
ground. It was said of Oscar McCulloch,
an earnest student of human life, that "in
whatever part of God's universe he finds him-
self, he will be a hopeful man, looking for-
ward and not backward, looking upward and
not downward, always ready to lend a helping
hand, and not afraid to die.'
32

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
Of like spirit was Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will."
It is through men of this type that the
work of civilization has been accomplished,
"men of present valor, stalwart, brave icono-
clasts." They were men who were content
with the order of the universe as it is, and
seek only to place their own actions in har-
mony with this order. They have no com-
plaints to urge against "the goodness and
severity of God," nor any futile wish "to
remould it nearer to the heart's desire." The
"Fanaticism for Veracity" is satisfied with
what is. Not the ultimate truth which is
God's alone, but the highest attainable truth,
is the aim of Science, and to translate Science
into Virtue is the goal of civilization.
The third question which Science may ask
is the direct one. In what part of the uni-
verse are you, and what are you doing?
Thoreau says that "there is no hope for you
unless this bit of sod under your feet is the
sweetest to you in this world—in any world.”
Why not? Nowhere is the sky so blue, the
grass so green, the sunshine so bright, the
DorM
33

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
shade so welcome, as right here, now, today.
No other blue sky, nor bright sunshine, nor
welcome shade exists for you. Other skies
are bright to other men. They have been
bright in the past and so will they be again,
but yours
yours are here and now. Today is your
day and mine, the only day we have, the day
in which we play our part. What our part
may signify in the great whole we may not
understand, but we are here to play it, and
now is the time. This we know, it is a part
of action, not of whining. It is a part of love,
not cynicism. It is for us to express love in
terms of human helpfulness. This we know,
for we have learned from sad experience that
any other course of life leads toward decay
and waste.
What, then, are you doing under these
blue skies? The thing you do should be for
you the most important thing in the world.
If
you could do something better than you
are doing now, everything considered, why
are you not doing it?
If every one did the very best he knew, most
of the problems of human lifewould be already
settled. If each one did the best he knew,
he would be on the highway to greater knowl-

34

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
edge, and therefore still better action. The
redemption of the world is waiting only for
each man to "lend a hand.”
It does not matter if the greatest thing for
you to do be not in itself great. The best
preparation for greatness comes in doing faith-
fully the little things that lie nearest. The
nearest is the greatest in most human lives.
Even washing one's own face may be the
greatest present duty. The ascetics of the
past, who scorned cleanliness in the search
for godliness, became, sometimes, neither
clean nor holy. For want of a clean face
they lost their souls.
It was Agassiz's strength that he knew the
value of today. Never were such bright skies
as arched above him; nowhere else were such
charming associates, such budding students,
such secrets of nature fresh to his hand. His
was the buoyant strength of the man who
can look the stars in the face because he does
his part in the Universe as well as they do
theirs. It is the fresh, unspoiled confidence
of the natural man, who finds the world a
world of action and joy, and time all too
short for the fulness of life which it de-
mands. When Agassiz died, "the best friend

35

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
that ever student had," the students of Har-
vard “laid a wreath of laurel on his bier, and
their manly voices sang a requiem, for he
had been a student all his life long, and when
he died he was younger
than any
of them.'
Optimism in life is a good working hypoth-
esis, if by optimism we mean the open-eyed
faith that force exerted is never lost. Much
that calls itself faith is only the blindness of
self-satisfaction.
only you and
ask for prob-
could grasp
What if there are so many of us in the
ranks of humanity? What if the individual
be lost in the mass as a pebble cast into the
Seven Seas? Would you choose a world so
small as to leave room for
your satellites? Would you
lems of life so tame that even you
them? Would you choose a fibreless Uni-
verse to be "remoulded nearer to the heart's
desire,” in place of the wild, tough, virile,
man-making environment from which the
Attraction of Gravitation lets none of us
escape?
It is not that "I come like water and like
wind I go." I am here today, and the
moment and the place are real, and my will
is itself one of the fates that make and un-
36

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
make all things. "Every meanest day is
the conflux of two eternities," and in this
center of all time and space for the moment
it is I that stand. Great is Eternity, but it
is made up of time.
of time. Could we blot out one
day in the midst of time, Eternity could be
no more. The feebleness of man has its
place within the infinite Omnipotence.
" It
It is a question not of hope or despair,
but of truth, not of optimism nor of Pessim-
ism, but of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing
what to do next; virtue is doing it. Re-
ligion is the heart impulse that turns toward
the best and highest course of action.
was my duty to have loved the highest.
What does that demand? What have I to
do next? Not in infinity, where we can do
nothing, but here, today, the greatest day
that ever was, for it alone is mine!
What matter is it that time does not end
with us? Neither with us does history
begin. An Emperor of China once decreed
that nothing should be before him, that
all history should begin with him. But he
could go no farther than his own decree.
Who are you that would be Emperor of
China?
37

:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
"The eternal Saki from that bowl hath
poured
Millions of bubbles like us and shall pour."
Why not? Should life stop with you?
What have you done that you should mark
the end of time? If you have played your
part in the procession of bubbles, all is well,
though the best you can do is to leave the
world a little better for the next that follows.
If you have not made life a little richer and
its conditions a little more just by your living
you
have not touched the world. You are
indeed a bubble. If some kind friend some-
where "turn down an empty glass,” it will
be the best monument you deserve. But to
have had a friend is to leave the glass not
wholly empty, for life is justified in love as
well as in action.
The words of Omar need to be read with
the rising inflection, and they become the ex-
pression of exultant hopefulness.
"The eternal Saki from that bowl hath
poured
Millions of bubbles and SHALL POUR!"
Small though we are the story is not all told
when we are dead. The huge procession
38

2
:: The Philosophy of Despair ::
goes on and shall go on, till the secret of the
grand symphony of life is reached.
"A single note in the Eternal Song
A perfect Singer hath had need for me."
* * *
"I do rejoice that when of Thee and Me
Men speak no longer, yet not less but more
The Eternal Saki still that bowl shall fill
And ever fairer, clearer bubbles pour."
In the same way we must read with the ris-
ing inflection the lines of Tennyson:
"I falter when I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares,
Upon the World's great altar-stairs
That slope through darkness, UP TO GOD!”
Read these words with courage, and with
the upward turn of the voice at the end. It
is no longer in the darkness that we falter.
The great altar-stairs of which no man knows
the beginning nor the end, do not spring from
the mire nor end in the mists. They "slope
through darkness up to God," and no one
could ask a stronger expression of that robust
optimism which must be the mainspring of
successful life.
OCT 2 2 1915
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