be destroyed" (_denn alles was ensteht ist wert doss es
zugrunde geht_). This is the pessimism which we men call evil, and not
that other pessimism that consists in lamenting what it fears to be true
and struggling against this fear--namely, that everything is doomed to
annihilation in the end. Mephistopheles asserts that everything that
exists deserves to be destroyed, annihilated, but not that everything
will be destroyed or annihilated; and we assert that everything that
exists deserves to be exalted and eternalized, even though no such fate
is in store for it. The moral attitude is the reverse of this.

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 ap