Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/499

Rh increased consumption of alcoholic drinks, adulteration of food, sentimentalism towards condemned criminals, yellow journals, comic supplements, and all the rest, not to speak of the wresting of lands from weak nations by strong ones, as in the case of France and Morocco, Italy and Turkey, England and the Transvaal, and the United States and Spain.

That these evils exist no optimist may deny, but that they offer any evidence that the present times are degenerate may be very seriously doubted. It may be doubted whether the young men of the olden times were any braver or had any broader shoulders, or that the girls were more modest or more virtuous. It may be doubted whether the children were of old any sounder or more robust. As regards each and all of the other indictments of the present times, it may well be doubted whether there has been any deterioration, on the whole; but rather it is probable that the farther back we go; the more weakness and deformity we shall find; the more graft, the more miscarriage of justice, the more dishonesty, the more drunkenness, the more wresting of lands from weak nations by strong ones.

The mere picturing of the evils of the present points to progress, for in times past not only were these evils present, but their presence was not much noticed. The more rare becomes crime the greater its interest for the headlines of our dailies. The muck rakers, if they had lived a few centuries ago, would have needed no rake to bring evils to the surface. No one, of course, would maintain that there has been a uniform progress or a constant decrease of evils, nor that all the sins of the present were found in the past, but on the whole the world has been getting better age by age and, sometimes, as at present, pretty fast.

But, it may be said, all this only proves that the world is getting better, not that it is intrinsically good. It might still be thoroughly bad and pessimism triumphant. With James Thompson we might still say:

 Speak not of comfort where no comfort is, Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair? Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss. Hush, and be mute, envisaging despair.

As regards this question of the absolute goodness or evil of the world, the new optimism, as has already been intimated, does not greatly concern itself with it. It is rather disposed to see the good that there is and put shoulder to wheel and help it on. If, however, one were concerned with this question, it could no doubt be shown on sound psychological and biological principles that there must be a large balance of pleasure over pain wherever life forces are triumphant. But the summum bonum is not pleasure nor happiness, but, rather, abundance of life. Life is the key to the problem. So long as there is growth, movement, struggle, onward rush, conquest or noble defeat, there is little