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118 temperament and circumstance. For pessimism does nothing actively to promote what traditional ethics would brand as immorality; it merely leaves the so-called morality or immorality to be dealt with by the fate inherent in existence. The interaction of both is the compound force that drives the universe surely to the desired dissolution.

Moreover, the negative or indirect method of pessimist ethics gives rise to problems of history, of politics, of religion; for one theory of these matters, put in practice, may promote the final catastrophe more surely and swiftly than another. Thus pessimism has its Philosophy of History, in which history appears as the evolution of the Three Stages of Illusion mentioned above. The great scene of the first stage was the pagan world, typical in which was the Hellenic joy in sensuous life, and the Roman glory in conquest and organisation. The scene of the second is Christendom, so far as it is untouched by decay of its essential dogmas. The scene of the third is the modern world of “enlightenment,” of “advanced” thinking, of political and economic reorganisation in the interest of “the good time coming.” Following this is the surely predestined disillusion that is to lead to the final dissolution.

Pessimism has also its Philosophy of Politics. Its ideal polity is a “strong government,” based on the