who do not accept it in its entirety largely sympathise with its dogmas as to life, death, and eternity. In all probability it will obtain, before long, literary representatives in this country, who, while finding perhaps few to adopt the fantastic metaphysics of its founders, may be easily able widely to diffuse some of its falsest principles and dreariest conclusions. I entertain not the least hope that it will soon entirely disappear. Those who regard it as a merely transient and superficial fashion of thought, as a touch or shade of speculative disease which will speedily vanish away, cannot perceive what is, however, manifestly the truth, that, with all its defects, it has the great merit of distinctly raising a question of enormous importance, which has been strangely overlooked even by philosophy; and further, that it is neither an inconsistent nor an unreasonable answer to that question, certain widely prevalent principles being presupposed.

The question to which I refer is, What is the worth of life? It is a question which few healthy and busy practical men, especially if moderately successful, ever ask, even in its immediate personal application to their own ambitions and enterprises. It generally needs disappointment, sickness, or grief to raise even momentarily the suspicion that human life may be but a vanity, and its schemes only shadows; and the vast majority of those on

whom this suspicion is forced, strive to get rid of it as quickly as they can. In natures with a thirst for happiness too deep to be quenched in the shallow waters of experience, or with a keen perception of the law of good, and an equally keen consciousness of a law in the members warring against it and bringing it into subjection, disappointment with this life, if not counteracted by faith in one which is better, may settle into the conviction that the world is but

"One desert,

Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness."

In times when society is disorganised, when old faiths and old ideals have lost their charm and power, when culture is widely spread, but corruption is still more diffused, a feeling of life's nothingness may be profound and prevalent, and may express itself in many forms. And, in fact, a vein of pessimism may be traced almost throughout history. Its throbs may be heard in the sad refrains of many a poet-as, for instance, within the present century, in those of a Byron in England, a Heine and Lenau in Germany, a Musset and Ackermann in France, a Leopardi in Italy, and a Campoamor in Spain.

It was reserved, however, for the modern pessimist philosophers of Germany distinctly to recognise that

the question as to the worth of human life deserved to be regarded as one of the chief problems of thought. It was reserved for them also to present as a reasoned and even demonstrated answer to it, what had previously only been uttered as a cry of agony or weariness, that life was worth less than nothing, that non-existence was better than existence. Although all the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome had sought to ascertain the end of life, they all tacitly agreed to identify it with the good. None who came after them until Schopenhauer appeared, ventured directly and explicitly to deny the truth of that assumption. But such a denial was indispensably needed in order to dispel the dogmatic slumber which weighed on the human mind as to this matter. And the denial came. Pessimism, like Macbeth, has murdered sleep. Henceforth no man who cultivates philosophy, and especially no man who cultivates moral philosophy, can remain ignorant that the question, What is the worth of life? demands from him as much serious consideration as the question, Is man a free or a necessitated agent? or as the question, What is the foundation of virtue? Nor can the awakening stop here; but from the philosophical consciousness it must descend to the common consciousness, and must spread until all intelligent and educated men are brought to feel that the theme is one on which they are bound to meditate. In this I see an

ample providential justification of pessimism. It has its mission; and now that it is here, it will not pass away until that mission is accomplished-which will not be, so long as atheistical principles are prevalent. It can only be overcome through the repression and refutation of atheism. If the present life be all; if there be no God and no immortality; if nothing have value except what can be empirically measured and weighed,-it may be possible to prove that such assertions as that consciousness is necessarily and essentially pain; that misery is always in excess of happiness; that the course of things is only from bad to worse, &c., are exaggerations; but not, I think, to disprove that what good there is in life is so mingled with sin, suffering, and delusion, that a wise man may reasonably and deliberately wish that he had never been born. More than this pessimism is not logically bound to maintain; and this it may successfully maintain against all who agree with it in the acceptance of atheistical principles. Of course, this is of itself, in my opinion, a very good reason for not accepting atheistical principles without the most careful consideration.

It is impossible for me, within the limits at my disposal, to describe and examine the various systems of pessimism separately. I shall therefore group them together, and endeavour to give a certain unity and interest to my treatment of them

by comparing, on a few fundamental points, the doctrines of Schopenhauer and Hartmann with that of Buddha. The sole purpose in view, it must be kept in mind, is to determine whether the pessimistic conceptions of the world, life, death, and eternity, are such that we ought to abandon for them our theism, or such as should lead us to value it more.

The chief difference between oriental Buddhism and German pessimism is the obvious one, that the former is inseparable from faith in a legendary person, while the latter consists of a series or collection of merely abstract systems. Buddhism cannot be dissociated from Buddha; pessimism has no necessary connection with Schopenhauer, or Hartmann, or any other person. The founder of Buddhism was Siddharta, also designated Gotama, Sakyamuni, and especially Buddha-i.e., the "enlightened." He belonged to the royal race of the Sakyas, who lived in northern India, in the district called Oude. Legend mentions Kapilavastu as his birthplace. The age in which he lived is so far from determined, that while some fix 543 B.C. as the year of his death, others prefer 368 B.C.; and every new inquirer into the subject seems to come to a new result. Buddha renounced his princely rank for the ascetic state; convinced himself of the unsatisfactoriness of Brahminism; taught the fundamental principles of the creed now associated