OPTIMISM.
THE German Emperor has been explaining his methods of work and his philosophy of life to a Bavarian novelist, Dr. Ludwig Ganghofer, and the conversation, as was to be expected, has got into the newspapers. It is a robust creed which he preaches, one well fitted for a great man of action, whose intense vitality has long astonished and agitated the world. He "has no use" for the pessimist. It is our business to believe every man good until be has proved himself a knave. No man can do anything in this world or any other without hope and faith. To succeed you must have the will to succeed, and the belief that success is worth having. Unless a man has this sturdy confidence in some ultimate good, a confidence strong enough to survive misfortunes and delays, he is unfit for either private or public life. It is the old creed of Cecil Rhodes : "You cannot swing a cat without "optimism." • Why is it that all such declarations come to our ears with a tonic freshness, however chary we may be of cheap enthusiasm P The normal healthy man, it would seem, must be an optimist, and pessimism has always something of the pathological in it. But it is worth while to distinguish between the true and false aspects of the quality, and the various types of the true, for much of the discredit which attaches to the word springs from a confusion of terminology. There is an optimism which is as irritating as the shallowest pessimism, the chirruping creed which is optimist only because it is also foolish. A man may not have the wit to see the misery of the "world. He may be so self-centred that he walks the high road of life without a glance at the halt and the maimed by the wayside, or so densely. stupid that he never troubles to inquire whether his pilgrimage will end in the Slough of Despond or the Celestial City. Such optimism is not a creed, but the negation of one. But even between true optimisms there is a distinction of kind. There is the optimism of disposithin, which is a natural endowment, and the optimism of faith, which is acquired by experience and thought. The optimist by temperament is a familiar figure. Ile has an intense vitality and an ardour of spirit which carry him over all the obstacles of life. He may also be an optimist by conviction, but as often as not he is a pessimist in creed. The heroes of the sagas, who looked for no rewards in an after-world, and who foresaw the day when Valhalla . would be destoyed by the Powers of darkness, yet went about their, work with a vigour undimmed by this ultimate fear. The temperamental optimist may believe that the world is perversely, ordered, and that Nature is not in alliance with, but in opposition to, the aspirations of man. Or he may have a neutral creed, some such _aphorism as Mr. Bradley's, that "this is the best of all possible worlds and everything in it is a necessary evil." But no theory of the end affects his work in the present. He has some physical or psychical spring of joy within him, a courage which is an instinct and not a reasoned duty. Such men are. happy, and they are also an effective force in the, world, but their value is in their actual work rather than in their example. They bequeath no legacy of stimulating doctrine, and they cannot be imitated by others, for if the gods have not given man this joie-de-vivre be will not attain it by taking thought. Fortunate and admirable souls, they go. their way carrying with them an air of gaiety and freshness and youth which is all their own, lighting the world if they do not warm it.
The optimist- by belief may have the same temperament or he, may not. In moat—but not perhaps in the greatest—we may find a basis of physical an4 mental health. Such a type often unreflecting in the deepest sense. His eyes are open and his mina is not sealed, .but the core of goodness in things evil seems to him so infinitely great that he does something less than.. justice to the badness of the remainder. He looks, as people say, on the bright aide of things, not because he is not aware of any other, but because the rest appears trivial in comparison. Of such a nature are the great optimists of literature, and the creed has been summed up in a famous epigram in the Greek Anthology :—
"All the ways of life are pleasant; in the market place are goodly companionships, and at home griefs are hidden ; the country brings pleasure, seafaring wealth, foreign lands know- ledge. Marriages make a united house, and the unmarried life is never anxious; a child is a bulwark to his father ; the childless are far from fears ; youth knows the gift of courage, white hairs of wisdom; therefore, taking courage, live."
But there are others whose temperament is pessimistic and halting, and who achieve optimism by an effort of courage. Such a man has no fund of cheerfulness to start with. His vitality may be low, or his body weak, or his circumstances in life one long tragedy. His optimism is a faith, a reasoned creed, which, having endured the fire, is seven times purified. Charles Lamb, burdened all his days with the shadow of madness ; Stevenson, preaching the gospel of cheerfulness from an eternal sick-bed,—in them there was no natural encouragement to happiness. William of Orange, fighting his long wars for a great cause in the midst of illness and misfortune, was an optimist in spite of fate. Such spirits are the true preachers of the creed to a world which at heart is disposed to follow them. No man can move his fellows unless he has abounding hope in his mission, faith in himself, and belief in the ultimate triumph of his cause. A creed of "may be's " will attract no devotees. The "fiery positive" is the only power which can jog on the march of progress a degree or so. But if this faith springs out of the very nursing-ground of despair, and has triumphed over hardships which would in most cases have killed it at birth, then men cannot but listen. If they are told that "somehow the right is the right and the smooth shall bloom from the rough" by one whose soul has been under the barrows of fate, they must needs believe in a faith which has stood so harsh a trial.
Current optimism has always a suspicion of shallowness about it. But the true optimism which is a faith is far more merciless than any pessimism. It blinks nothing of the evil of a world lying in wickedness. It will go the whole way with pessimism in recognising the stubborn alienness of matter and the desperate pitfalls which beset the efforts of humanity. It will admit the grossness and hypocrisy of man ; it will take the aureole from the saint, and strip the mantle from the prophet, for the first article of its creed is that the world must be faced with clear, searching eyes, and that no faith is worth having which cannot bear the test of a rigorous examination.
Its data, it may be, are the same as pessimism, but its conclu- sion differs. Bishop Blougram under its gaze ceases to be the reverend father-in-God ; but he remains, not a hypocrite, but a man following his own private ideal unknown to the multi- tude. It will show common standards of good and evil to be of doubtful value; it will unmask cherished conventions ; it
will shirk no detail of the hardness and desolation of life. But the last word is still of hope. "The smooth shall bloom from
the rough." The moral of one of Stevenson's fables may well
be taken as the summary of this nobler optimism :— " The sticks break, the stones crumble, The eternal altars tilt and tumble, Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist About the amazed evangelist.
He stands unshook from age to youth Upon one pin-point of the truth."
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