Yes, everything deserves to be eternalized, absolutely everything, even evil itself, for that which we call evil would lose its evilness in being eternalized, because it would lose its temporal nature.  For the essence of evil consists in its temporal nature, in its not applying itself to any ultimate and permanent end.

And it might not be superfluous here to say something about that distinction, more overlaid with confusion than any other, between what we are accustomed to call optimism and pessimism, a confusion not less than that which exists with regard to the distinction between individualism and socialism.  Indeed, it is scarcely possible to form a clear idea as to what pessimism really is.

I have just this very day read in the Nation (July 6, 1912) an article, entitled “A Dramatic Inferno,” that deals with an English translation of the works of Strindberg, and it opens with the following judicious observations:  “If there were in the world a sincere and total pessimism, it would of necessity be silent.  The despair which finds a voice is a social mood, it is the cry of misery which brother utters to brother when both are stumbling through a valley of shadows which is peopled with—­comrades.  In its anguish it bears witness to something that is good in life, for it presupposes sympathy ...  The real gloom, the sincere despair, is dumb and blind; it writes no books, and feels no impulse to burden an intolerable universe with a monument more lasting than brass.”  Doubtless there is something of sophistry in this criticism, for the man who is really in pain weeps and even cries aloud, even if he is alone and there is nobody to hear him, simply as a means of alleviating his pain, although this perhaps may be a result of social habits.  But does not the lion, alone in the desert, roar if he has an aching tooth?  But apart from this, it cannot be denied that there is a substance of truth underlying these remarks.  The pessimism that protests and defends itself cannot be truly said to be pessimism.  And, in truth, still less is it pessimism to hold that nothing ought to perish although all things may be doomed to annihilation, while on the other hand it is pessimism to affirm that all things ought to be annihilated even though nothing may perish.

Pessimism, moreover, may possess different values.  There is a eudemonistic or economic pessimism, that which denies happiness; there is an ethical pessimism, that which denies the triumph of moral good; and there is a religious pessimism, that which despairs of the human finality of the Universe, of the eternal salvation of the individual soul.