And now I will ask one more question, which may seem, perhaps, to have but little importance, but which I find personally interesting. I have been told by a reviewer, of whom upon the whole I have little reason to complain, that the theory I put forward in 'Life and Habit,' and which I am now again insisting on, is pessimism—pure and simple. I have a very vague idea what pessimism means, but I should be sorry to believe that I am a pessimist. Which, I would ask, is the pessimist? He who sees love of beauty, design, steadfastness of purpose, intelligence, courage, and every quality to which success has assigned the name of "worth," as having drawn the pattern of every leaf and organ now and in all past time, or he who sees nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of accidents and of forces interacting blindly?
FOOTNOTES:
[24] 'Nat. Theol.,' ch. xxiii.
[25] 'Oiseaux,' vol. i. p. 5.
[26] 'Westminster Review,' vol. xlix. p. 124.
[27] Translation: "The first of these two attempts is a true 'philosophy of the unconscious,' not Hartmann's unconscious, which influences the natural evolution of organism from without as though by Providence and miracle, but of an unconscious, which, as the author shows, our own experience and the progressive succession of organisms from the monads and amœbæ up to the highest plants and animals, including ourselves, allows, if it does not compel us to assume [as obtaining] in all organic beings. This philosophy of the unconscious is new, or at any rate now for the first time carried out consequentially in detail; its main features, briefly stated are as follows."
SCHEME OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.