phy the emotions play no part as organs
of discovery. They are facts in themselves, and as such are of course of
value; but they point to no facts beyond themselves. That men loved God
and felt his presence close to them proves nothing, to the positive
thinker, as to God's existence. Nor will the mere emotion of reverence
towards life necessarily go any farther towards proving that it deserves
reverence. It is distinctly asserted by the modern school that the right
state in which to approach everything is a state of enlightened
scepticism. We are to consider everything doubtful, until it is proved
certain, or unless, from its very nature, it is not possible to doubt
it.

Nor is this all; for, apart from these modern canons, the question of
life's worth has, as a matter of fact, been always recognised as in a
certain sense an open one. The greatest intellects of the world, in all
ages, have been at times inclined to doubt it. And these times have not
seemed to them times of blindness; but on the contrary, of specially
clear insight. Scales, as it were, have fallen from their eyes for a
moment or two, and the beauty and worth of existence has appeared to
them as but a deceiving show. An entire book of the Hebrew Scriptures is
devoted to a deliberate exposition of this philosophy. In '_the most
high and palmy state_' of Athens it was expressed fitfully also as the
deepest wisdom of her most triumphant dramatist.[1] And in Shakspeare it
appears so constantly, that it must evidently have had for him some
directly personal meaning.

This view, however, even by most of those who have held it, has been
felt to be really only a half-view in the guise of a whole one. To
Shakspeare, for instance, it was full of a profound terror. It crushed,
and appalled, and touched him; and there was not only implied in it that
for us life does mean little, but that by some possibility it might have
meant much. Or else, if the pessimism has been more complete than this,
it has probably been adopted as a kind of solemn affectation, or has
else been lamented as a form of diseased melancholy. It is a view that
healthy intellects have hitherto declined to entertain. Its advocates
have been met with neglect, contempt, or castigation, not with
arguments. They have been pitied as insane, avoided as cynical, or
passed over as frivolous. And yet, but for one reason, to that whole
European world whose progress we are now inheriting, this view would
have