hing back--
his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has
a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly,
I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to
healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism
which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses;
that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that
no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not
worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son
should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.
But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men,
and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested:
he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry
to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said,
without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge
which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people
from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a
military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant.
Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot)
uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away
the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is
still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive.
It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox;
but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher
who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants
to help the men.

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods
and men, but that he does not love what he chastises--he has not
this primary and supernatural loyalty to things. What is the evil
of the man commonly called an optimist? Obviously, it is felt
that the optimist, wishing to defend the honour of this world,
will defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe;
he will say, "My cosmos, right or wrong." He will be less inclined
to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench
official answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances.
He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world. All this
(which is true of a type of optimist) leads us to the one really
interesting point of psychology, which could not be explained
without it.

We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: