Pessimism, then, represents, to the popular mind, a philosophy or view of life the very name of which is enough to condemn it.  The popular mind, however, overlooks one important point.  Pessimism is a vague word.  It does not represent one philosophy, but several; and before we, in any case, reject its claims on our attention, we should take care to see what its exact meaning is.

The views of life it includes may be classified in two ways.  In the first place, they are either what we may call critical pessimisms or prospective pessimisms:  of which the thesis of the first is that human life is essentially evil; and of the second, that whatever human life may be now, its tendency is to get worse instead of better.  The one is the denial of human happiness; the other the denial of human hope.  But there is a second classification to make, traversing this one, and far more important.  Pessimism may be either absolute or hypothetical.  The first of these maintains its theses as statements of actual facts; the second, which is, of its nature, prospective mainly, only maintains them as statements of what will be facts, in the event of certain possible though it may be remote contingencies.

Now, absolute pessimism, whether it be critical or prospective, can be nothing, in the present state of the world, but an exhibition of ill temper or folly.  It is hard to imagine a greater waste of ingenuity than the attempts that have been made sometimes to deduce from the nature of pain and pleasure, that the balance in life must be always in favour of the former, and that life itself is necessarily and universally an evil.  Let the arguments be never so elaborate, they are blown away like cobwebs by a breath of open-air experience.  Equally useless are the attempts to predict the gloom of the future.  Such predictions either mean nothing, or else they are mere loose conjectures, suggested by low spirits or disappointment.  They are of no philosophic or scientific value; and though in some cases they may give literary expression to moods already existing, they will never produce conviction in minds that would else be unconvinced.  The gift of prophecy as to general human history is not a gift that any philosophy can bestow.  It could only be acquired through a superhuman inspiration which is denied to man or through a superhuman sagacity which is never attained by him.

The hypothetical pessimism that is contained in my arguments is a very different thing from this, and far humbler.  It makes no foolish attempts to say anything general about the present, or anything absolute about the future.  As to the future, it only takes the absolute things that have been said by others; and not professing any certainty about their truth, merely explains their meaning.  It deals with a certain change in human beliefs, now confidently predicted; but it does not say that this prediction will be fulfilled.  It says only that if it be, a change, not at present counted on, will be effected