nspicuous loneliness" that took
the starch out of the collar of Byron. "The youth," says Zangwill,
"says bitter things about Life which Life would have winced to hear had
it been alive." With others Pessimism has deeper roots and finds its
expression in the poetry or philosophy of real despair.

This adolescent Pessimism cannot be wrought into action. The mood
disappears when real action is demanded. The Pessimism of youth vanishes
with the coming of life. Through the rush of the new century, the fad of
the drooping spirit has already given way to the fad of the strenuous
life. Equally unreasoning it may be, but far more wholesome.

But if action is impossible, the mood remains. And here arises the
despair of the highly educated. The purpose of knowledge is action. But
to refuse action is to secure time for the acquisition of more
knowledge. It is written in the very structure of the brain that each
impression of the senses must bring with it the impulse to act. To
resist this impulse is in turn to destroy it and to substitute a dull
soul-ache in its place. "Much study is a weariness of the flesh, and the
experience of all the ages brings only despair if it cannot be wrought
into life. This lack of balance between knowledge and achievement is the
main element in a form of ineffectiveness which with various others has
been uncritically called Degeneration. As the common pleasures which
arise from active life become impossible or distasteful, the desire for
more intense and novel joys comes in, and with the goading of the thirst
for these comes ever deeper discouragement.

At the best, the tendency of large knowledge, not vitalized by practical
experience, is to spend itself in cynical criticism, in futile efforts
to tear down without feeling the higher obligation to build up. For it
is the essence of this form of Pessimism to feel that there is nothing
on earth worth the trouble of building. The real is only a "sneering
comment" on the ideal, and man's life is too short to make any action
worth while.

"With her the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hands wrought to make it grow;
And this is all the harvest that I reap'd,
'I come like water, and like wind I go.'"

One of the few things that we may know in life is this, that it is
impossible for man to know anything absolutely. The power of reasoning
is a mere "by-product in the process of Evolution." It is but an
instrument to help out the confusi