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Show i ; I PESSIMISM. i Several times within the last few weeks the question has been sprung in our hearing "Is it not a fact that the j world is growing worse rather than j better?" This certainly is a big ques tion, a world wide problem, a question that touches all sorts and conditions of men. It may be answered from different differ-ent points of view, from different points of view socially, politically, re- j 1 ligiously, and even geographically a I I solution given in Utah would differ j Yery widely indeed from an answer given in Peru, Siberia or Pekin. An adequate reply must have breadth of scope and impartial fairness of treatment, treat-ment, it must not be local in its data nor loo narrow in its interpretation of men and things, its basic facts should at least be gathered from within the last half centuiy. And in this time I period the old and the new world j ehould receive an equal share of at j tention. A" strictly scientific spirit ! should guide the researches, statistics ehould be tested and carefully examined, exam-ined, general statements just as carefully care-fully verified, if only in some such way the last fifty years could be carefully care-fully compared with any previous Lalf century of the world's history, we personally per-sonally feel that the answer would be a negative one. The world is not growing grow-ing worse, no! no!l not by any means. We are aware that much can be said by the pessimist and it is well to know the worst, it is highly proper and in many ways as highly beneficial that there should be in every community a good sprinkling of minds that are J keenly sensitive to the mumps and measles of society and to all the maladies mala-dies that afilict the social organism. We judge that it is to sociology as a recently formulated science that we are indebted for much of the information informa-tion that has settled on some thinkers as an incubus, and given great plausibility plausi-bility to the apparently growing pesssi-mietic pesssi-mietic interpretation of the world's i current history. Such for example as the sociological returns of the different differ-ent governments ot Europe and America Amer-ica during the last few weeks, show ing as they do the frightful increase of suicides in Europe, and of insanity in America. And again the pessimist can say and does in his own way say, what an irony of fate the history of the latter half of the nineteenth century presents 10 any one wno can ioo& uacit on me ursi great international exhibition in 1851. It seemed as if the beautiful glass fabric, which the genius of Sir Joseph Pax ton had raised amidst the verdant turf and umbrageous elms of Hyde park, were a modern temple of Janus, in which the nations of the earth had met to celebrate the inauguration of an era of perpetual and universal peace. Everything pointed to the conclusion that both nations and rulers had become be-come wiser, and had come to see that war was always a calamity and too of oen a crime. Where are those flattering visions now? "0 caeca mens mortalium." How little it is given even to the most sagacious of mortals to foresee the course of this world's evolution, and how wiee the aphorism, "Never prophesy proph-esy unless you know." Instead ot closing the temple of Janus the exhibition of 1851 seems to have oeen tue signal ior turowing wide open its portals, letting Blip the dogs of war and cheering them on to greater ravages than ever. Since that date there have been eight gigantic wars in which great powers have been engaged, large armies brought into the field and battles fought on a scale equal to the greatest record in history, extending from the Crimean war to the Ameri- can ciyil war. And from the best re turns it is evident that there are now something like fifteen millions of soldiers in the standing arraieB of Europe. When these and such like facts face the attention of sociological thinkers it is not to be wondered at that some of them take sides with peesimiem and lose hope for the future of mankind. Such writers as Carlyle haye certainly cer-tainly given enough of "Ihe dark 6ide of life, but though Carlyle was undoubtedly undoub-tedly a great literary genius, it is n?)t unjust to eay that he was a dreadful croaker. Barren, brainless, soulless, faithleSB, were the epithets he commonly com-monly applied to the age in which he lived, and his favorite simile for his contemporaries was that of apes chattering chat-tering on the shores of the Dead Sea. Poor Carlylel He suffered from chronic dyspepsia. Could he have taken three equare meala a day and, fe'.t the better . . " m " jiiiiji.iiirt.nji.ini .m i .y m wml iinj.iwwtwij.iLii.iHi i m vwtmmmminmmmmmmmv for it, his views of the age and of b!s contemporaries would have been materially ma-terially altered. An earlier than Carlyle had said Lord Billingbroke that "considering how much trouble there wTas in coming into the world and the immense amount of humbus one had to eat in going through the world, it was a question whether or not after all, it was worth while being here anyhow." Dean Swift was another example of a etlll more irrational form of pessimism; and an Italian scientist has declared that this world is the worst of all woi Ids. Others have said this i3 a waste, how ling wilderness, for the reason rea-son probably that they are always howling in it, and loye to have it so. That there is something wrong in the state of Denmark, may be granted, but that there is eomething wrong in the very make and constitution of things we cannot and dare not affirm; we -Ehould for many and quite sufficient reasons hesitate to preach such a doctrine as pessimism either directly or by implication, it seems to us nothing noth-ing short of an impeachment of both divine wisdom and divine goodness. Pessimism as a doctrine of the worst tends to deaden the best hopes and aspirations of our race, it is too literally liter-ally a wet blanket to the vital forces of human society, and tends to cripple the philanthropic energies of the vast hosts of willing workers who so self-sacri-ficingly spend both money and love for the good of others. It is imperatively necessary and equally wise that the causes of human misery Ehould be traced, and as far as possible removed, but it is not in power of despondency, melancholy, misanthropy, misan-thropy, cynicism or pessimism, either to begin or carry on any effective measures meas-ures for the amelioration of human suffering. Both a brighter view and a brighter feeling must dwell in the eouls of all who take their daily share in making the life of the world progressively better, bet-ter, brighter and in every way nobler as the years pass by. |