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Title: Optimism
       An Essay

Author: Helen Keller

Release Date: March 13, 2010 [EBook #31622]

Language: English

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Optimism

Optimism
An Essay
By Helen Keller
Author of
"The Story of My Life"

New York
T. Y. Crowell and Company
Mdcccciii

Copyright, 1903, by Helen Keller
Published November, 1903
D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston

To My Teacher

Contents

Part i
Optimism Within 11
Part ii
Optimism Without 25
Part iii
The Practice of Optimism53

Part i. Optimism Within

Part i [11]

Optimism Within

Could we choose our environment,

and were desire in
human undertakings synonymous
with endowment, all men
would, I suppose, be optimists. Certainly
most of us regard happiness
as the proper end of all earthly enterprise.
The will to be happy animates
alike the philosopher, the
prince and the chimney-sweep. No
matter how dull, or how mean, or
how wise a man is, he feels that happiness
is his indisputable right.

It is curious to observe what different[12]
ideals of happiness people cherish,
and in what singular places they
look for this well-spring of their life.
Many look for it in the hoarding of
riches, some in the pride of power,
and others in the achievements of
art and literature; a few seek it in
the exploration of their own minds,
or in the search for knowledge.

Most people measure their happiness
in terms of physical pleasure
and material possession. Could they
win some visible goal which they
have set on the horizon, how happy
they would be! Lacking this gift or
that circumstance, they would be
miserable. If happiness is to be so
measured, I who cannot hear or see
have every reason to sit in a corner
with folded hands and weep. If I am
happy in spite of my deprivations, if
my happiness is so deep that it is a
faith, so thoughtful that it becomes
a philosophy of life,""if, in short, I[13]
am an optimist, my testimony to the
creed of optimism is worth hearing.
As sinners stand up in meeting and
testify to the goodness of God, so one
who is called afflicted may rise up in
gladness of conviction and testify to
the goodness of life.

Once I knew the depth where no
hope was, and darkness lay on the
face of all things. Then love came
and set my soul free. Once I knew
only darkness and stillness. Now I
know hope and joy. Once I fretted
and beat myself against the wall that
shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness
that I can think, act and
attain heaven. My life was without
past or future; death, the pessimist
would say, "a consummation devoutly
to be wished."  But a little
word from the fingers of another fell
into my hand that clutched at emptiness,
and my heart leaped to the rapture
of living. Night fled before the[14]
day of thought, and love and joy and
hope came up in a passion of obedience
to knowledge. Can anyone who
has escaped such captivity, who has
felt the thrill and glory of freedom,
be a pessimist?

My early experience was thus a
leap from bad to good. If I tried, I
could not check the momentum of
my first leap out of the dark; to move
breast forward is a habit learned suddenly
at that first moment of release
and rush into the light. With the first
word I used intelligently, I learned
to live, to think, to hope. Darkness
cannot shut me in again. I have had
a glimpse of the shore, and can now
live by the hope of reaching it.

So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning
satisfaction. A poet once
said I must be happy because I did
not see the bare, cold present, but
lived in a beautiful dream. I do live
in a beautiful dream; but that dream[15]
is the actual, the present,""not cold,
but warm; not bare, but furnished
with a thousand blessings. The very
evil which the poet supposed would
be a cruel disillusionment is necessary
to the fullest knowledge of joy.
Only by contact with evil could I
have learned to feel by contrast the
beauty of truth and love and goodness.

It is a mistake always to contemplate
the good and ignore the evil,
because by making people neglectful
it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous
optimism of ignorance and
indifference. It is not enough to say
that the twentieth century is the
best age in the history of mankind,
and to take refuge from the evils of
the world in skyey dreams of good.
How many good men, prosperous
and contented, looked around and
saw naught but good, while millions
of their fellowmen were bartered and[16]
sold like cattle! No doubt, there were
comfortable optimists who thought
Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic
when he was working with might
and main to free the slaves. I distrust
the rash optimism in this country
that cries, "Hurrah, we're all
right! This is the greatest nation on
earth,"  when there are grievances
that call loudly for redress. That is
false optimism. Optimism that does
not count the cost is like a house
builded on sand. A man must understand
evil and be acquainted with
sorrow before he can write himself
an optimist and expect others to believe
that he has reason for the faith
that is in him.

I know what evil is. Once or twice
I have wrestled with it, and for a time
felt its chilling touch on my life; so
I speak with knowledge when I say
that evil is of no consequence, except
as a sort of mental gymnastic.[17]
For the very reason that I have come
in contact with it, I am more truly an
optimist. I can say with conviction
that the struggle which evil necessitates
is one of the greatest blessings.
It makes us strong, patient,
helpful men and women. It lets us
into the soul of things and teaches
us that although the world is full of
suffering, it is full also of the overcoming
of it. My optimism, then, does
not rest on the absence of evil, but
on a glad belief in the preponderance
of good and a willing effort always
to co-operate with the good, that it
may prevail. I try to increase the
power God has given me to see the
best in everything and every one,
and make that Best a part of my life.
The world is sown with good; but
unless I turn my glad thoughts into
practical living and till my own field,
I cannot reap a kernel of the good.

Thus my optimism is grounded in[18]
two worlds, myself and what is about
me. I demand that the world be good,
and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world
good, and facts range themselves to
prove my proclamation overwhelmingly
true. To what is good I open
the doors of my being, and jealously
shut them against what is bad. Such
is the force of this beautiful and wilful
conviction, it carries itself in the
face of all opposition. I am never discouraged
by absence of good. I never
can be argued into hopelessness.
Doubt and mistrust are the mere
panic of timid imagination, which
the steadfast heart will conquer, and
the large mind transcend.

As my college days draw to a close,
I find myself looking forward with
beating heart and bright anticipations
to what the future holds of activity
for me. My share in the work
of the world may be limited; but the
fact that it is work makes it precious.[19]
Nay, the desire and will to work is
optimism itself.

Two generations ago Carlyle flung
forth his gospel of work. To the
dreamers of the Revolution, who
built cloud-castles of happiness, and,
when the inevitable winds rent the
castles asunder, turned pessimists""to
those ineffectual Endymions,
Alastors and Werthers, this Scots
peasant, man of dreams in the hard,
practical world, cried aloud his creed
of labor. "Be no longer a Chaos, but
a World. Produce! produce! Were it
but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction
of a product, produce it, in God's
name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in
thee; out with it, then. Up, up! whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it
with thy whole might. Work while
it is called To-day; for the Night cometh
wherein no man may work."

Some have said Carlyle was taking
refuge from a hard world by bidding[20]
men grind and toil, eyes to the
earth, and so forget their misery.
This is not Carlyle's thought. "Fool!"
he cries, "the Ideal is in thyself; the
Impediment is also in thyself. Work
out the Ideal in the poor, miserable
Actual; live, think, believe, and be
free!"  It is plain what he says, that
work, production, brings life out of
chaos, makes the individual a world,
an order; and order is optimism.

I, too, can work, and because I love
to labor with my head and my hands,
I am an optimist in spite of all. I used
to think I should be thwarted in my
desire to do something useful. But
I have found out that though the
ways in which I can make myself
useful are few, yet the work open to
me is endless. The gladdest laborer
in the vineyard may be a cripple.
Even should the others outstrip him,
yet the vineyard ripens in the sun
each year, and the full clusters weigh[21]
into his hand. Darwin could work
only half an hour at a time; yet in
many diligent half-hours he laid
anew the foundations of philosophy.
I long to accomplish a great and noble
task; but it is my chief duty and
joy to accomplish humble tasks as
though they were great and noble.
It is my service to think how I can
best fulfil the demands that each day
makes upon me, and to rejoice that
others can do what I cannot. Green,
the historian,[1] tells us that the world
is moved along, not only by the
mighty shoves of its heroes, but also
by the aggregate of the tiny pushes
of each honest worker; and that
thought alone suffices to guide me in
this dark world and wide. I love the
good that others do; for their activity
is an assurance that whether I can
help or not, the true and the good
[22]will stand sure.

I trust, and nothing that happens
disturbs my trust. I recognize the
beneficence of the power which we
all worship as supreme""Order, Fate,
the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize
this power in the sun that
makes all things grow and keeps life
afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable
force, and straightway I feel
glad, brave and ready for any lot
Heaven may decree for me. This is
my religion of optimism.[23]

Part ii. Optimism Without[24]

Part ii
Optimism Without

Optimism, then, is a fact

within my own heart. But as
I look out upon life, my heart
meets no contradiction. The outward
world justifies my inward universe
of good. All through the years
I have spent in college, my reading
has been a continuous discovery of
good. In literature, philosophy, religion
and history I find the mighty
witnesses to my faith.

Philosophy is the history of a deaf-blind
person writ large. From the
talks of Socrates up through Plato,[26]
Berkeley and Kant, philosophy records
the efforts of human intelligence
to be free of the clogging
material world and fly forth into a
universe of pure idea. A deaf-blind
person ought to find special meaning
in Plato's Ideal World. These
things which you see and hear and
touch are not the reality of realities,
but imperfect manifestations of the
Idea, the Principle, the Spiritual; the
Idea is the truth, the rest is delusion.

If this be so, my brethren who
enjoy the fullest use of the senses
are not aware of any reality which
may not equally well be in reach of
my mind. Philosophy gives to the
mind the prerogative of seeing truth,
and bears us into a realm where I,
who am blind, am not different from
you who see. When I learned from
Berkeley that your eyes receive an
inverted image of things which your
brain unconsciously corrects, I began[27]
to suspect that the eye is not a
very reliable instrument after all, and
I felt as one who had been restored
to equality with others, glad, not because
the senses avail them so little,
but because in God's eternal world,
mind and spirit avail so much. It
seemed to me that philosophy had
been written for my special consolation,
whereby I get even with some
modern philosophers who apparently
think that I was intended as
an experimental case for their special
instruction! But in a little measure
my small voice of individual experience
does join in the declaration
of philosophy that the good is the
only world, and that world is a world
of spirit. It is also a universe where
order is All, where an unbroken logic
holds the parts together, where disorder
defines itself as non-existence,
where evil, as St. Augustine held, is
delusion, and therefore is not.[28]

The meaning of philosophy to me
is not only in its principles, but also
in the happy isolation of its great
expounders. They were seldom of
the world, even when like Plato and
Leibnitz they moved in its courts
and drawing-rooms. To the tumult
of life they were deaf, and they were
blind to its distraction and perplexing
diversities. Sitting alone, but not
in darkness, they learned to find
everything in themselves, and failing
to find it even there, they still
trusted in meeting the truth face to
face when they should leave the earth
behind and become partakers in the
wisdom of God. The great mystics
lived alone, deaf and blind, but dwelling
with God.

I understand how it was possible
for Spinoza to find deep and sustained
happiness when he was excommunicated,
poor, despised and
suspected alike by Jew and Christian;[29]
not that the kind world of men
ever treated me so, but that his isolation
from the universe of sensuous
joys is somewhat analogous to mine.
He loved the good for its own sake.
Like many great spirits he accepted
his place in the world, and confided
himself childlike to a higher power,
believing that it worked through his
hands and predominated in his being.
He trusted implicitly, and that
is what I do. Deep, solemn optimism,
it seems to me, should spring from
this firm belief in the presence of
God in the individual; not a remote,
unapproachable governor of the universe,
but a God who is very near
every one of us, who is present not
only in earth, sea and sky, but also in
every pure and noble impulse of our
hearts, "the source and centre of all
minds, their only point of rest."

Thus from philosophy I learn that
we see only shadows and know only[30]
in part, and that all things change;
but the mind, the unconquerable
mind, compasses all truth, embraces
the universe as it is, converts the
shadows to realities and makes tumultuous
changes seem but moments
in an eternal silence, or short
lines in the infinite theme of perfection,
and the evil but "a halt on the
way to good."  Though with my hand
I grasp only a small part of the universe,
with my spirit I see the whole,
and in my thought I can compass
the beneficent laws by which it is
governed. The confidence and trust
which these conceptions inspire
teach me to rest safe in my life as in
a fate, and protect me from spectral
doubts and fears. Verily, blessed are
ye that have not seen, and yet have
believed.

All the world's great philosophers
have been lovers of God and believers
in man's inner goodness. To know[31]
the history of philosophy is to know
that the highest thinkers of the ages,
the seers of the tribes and the nations,
have been optimists.

The growth of philosophy is the
story of man's spiritual life. Outside
lies that great mass of events which
we call History. As I look on this
mass, I see it take form and shape
itself in the ways of God. The history
of man is an epic of progress. In the
world within and the world without
I see a wonderful correspondence,
a glorious symbolism which reveals
the human and the divine communing
together, the lesson of philosophy
repeated in fact. In all the parts
that compose the history of mankind
hides the spirit of good, and gives
meaning to the whole.

Far back in the twilight of history
I see the savage fleeing from
the forces of nature which he has
not learned to control, and seeking[32]
to propitiate supernatural beings
which are but the creation of his
superstitious fear. With a shift of
imagination I see the savage emancipated,
civilized. He no longer worships
the grim deities of ignorance.
Through suffering he has learned to
build a roof over his head, to defend
his life and his home, and over his
state he has erected a temple in
which he worships the joyous gods
of light and song. From suffering he
has learned justice; from the struggle
with his fellows he has learned
the distinction between right and
wrong which makes him a moral being.
He is gifted with the genius of
Greece.

But Greece was not perfect. Her
poetical and religious ideals were
far above her practice; therefore she
died, that her ideals might survive
to ennoble coming ages.

Rome, too, left the world a rich inheritance.[33]
Through the vicissitudes
of history her laws and ordered government
have stood a majestic object-lesson
for the ages. But when
the stern, frugal character of her people
ceased to be the bone and sinew
of her civilization, Rome fell.

Then came the new nations of the
North and founded a more permanent
society. The base of Greek and Roman
society was the slave, crushed
into the condition of the wretches
who "labored, foredone, in the field
and at the workshop, like haltered
horses, if blind, so much the quieter."
The base of the new society was the
freeman who fought, tilled, judged
and grew from more to more. He
wrought a state out of tribal kinship
and fostered an independence and
self-reliance which no oppression
could destroy. The story of man's
slow ascent from savagery through
barbarism and self-mastery to civilization[34]
is the embodiment of the
spirit of optimism. From the first
hour of the new nations each century
has seen a better Europe, until
the development of the world demanded
America.

Tolstoi said the other day that
America, once the hope of the world,
was in bondage to Mammon. Tolstoi
and other Europeans have still much
to learn about this great, free country
of ours before they understand
the unique civic struggle which
America is undergoing. She is confronted
with the mighty task of assimilating
all the foreigners that are
drawn together from every country,
and welding them into one people
with one national spirit. We have
the right to demand the forbearance
of critics until the United States has
demonstrated whether she can make
one people out of all the nations of
the earth. London economists are[35]
alarmed at less than five hundred
thousand foreign-born in a population
of six million, and discuss earnestly
the danger of too many aliens.
But what is their problem in comparison
with that of New York, which
counts nearly one million five hundred
thousand foreigners among its
three and a half million citizens?
Think of it! Every third person in
our American metropolis is an alien.
By these figures alone America's
greatness can be measured.

It is true, America has devoted herself
largely to the solution of material
problems""breaking the fields,
opening mines, irrigating deserts,
spanning the continent with railroads;
but she is doing these things
in a new way, by educating her people,
by placing at the service of every
man's need every resource of human
skill. She is transmuting her industrial
wealth into the education of her[36]
workmen, so that unskilled people
shall have no place in American life,
so that all men shall bring mind and
soul to the control of matter. Her
children are not drudges and slaves.
The Constitution has declared it, and
the spirit of our institutions has confirmed
it. The best the land can teach
them they shall know. They shall
learn that there is no upper class
in their country, and no lower, and
they shall understand how it is that
God and His world are for everybody.

America might do all this, and still
be selfish, still be a worshipper of
Mammon. But America is the home of
charity as well as of commerce. In the
midst of roaring traffic, side by side
with noisy factory and sky-reaching
warehouse, one sees the school,
the library, the hospital, the park-works
of public benevolence which
represent wealth wrought into ideas
that shall endure forever. Behold[37]
what America has already done to
alleviate suffering and restore the
afflicted to society""given sight to
the fingers of the blind, language to
the dumb lip, and mind to the idiot
clay, and tell me if indeed she worships
Mammon only. Who shall measure
the sympathy, skill and intelligence
with which she ministers to
all who come to her, and lessens the
ever-swelling tide of poverty, misery
and degradation which every year
rolls against her gates from all the
nations?

When I reflect on all these facts,
I cannot but think that, Tolstoi and
other theorists to the contrary, it is
a splendid thing to be an American.
In America the optimist finds abundant
reason for confidence in the
present and hope for the future, and
this hope, this confidence, may well
extend over all the great nations of
the earth.[38]

If we compare our own time with
the past, we find in modern statistics
a solid foundation for a confident and
buoyant world-optimism. Beneath
the doubt, the unrest, the materialism,
which surround us still glows
and burns at the world's best life a
steadfast faith. To hear the pessimist,
one would think civilization
had bivouacked in the Middle Ages,
and had not had marching orders
since. He does not realize that the
progress of evolution is not an uninterrupted
march.

"Now touching goal, now backward hurl'd,
Toils the indomitable world."

I have recently read an address by
one whose knowledge it would be
presumptuous to challenge.[2] In it I
find abundant evidence of progress.

During the past fifty years crime
has decreased. True, the records of
[39]to-day contain a longer list of crime.
But our statistics are more complete
and accurate than the statistics of
times past. Besides, there are many
offences on the list which half a
century ago would not have been
thought of as crimes. This shows
that the public conscience is more
sensitive than it ever was.

Our definition of crime has grown
stricter, our punishment of it more
lenient and intelligent. The old feeling
of revenge has largely disappeared.
It is no longer an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth. The criminal
is treated as one who is diseased. He
is confined not merely for punishment,
but because he is a menace to
society. While he is under restraint,
he is treated with humane care and
disciplined so that his mind shall be
cured of its disease, and he shall be
restored to society able to do his part
of its work.[40]

Another sign of awakened and enlightened
public conscience is the
effort to provide the working-class
with better houses. Did it occur to
any one a hundred years ago to think
whether the dwellings of the poor
were sanitary, convenient or sunny?
Do not forget that in the "good old
times"  cholera and typhus devastated
whole counties, and that pestilence
walked abroad in the capitals
of Europe.

Not only have our laboring-classes
better houses and better places to
work in; but employers recognize
the right of the employed to seek
more than the bare wage of existence.
In the darkness and turmoil
of our modern industrial strifes we
discern but dimly the principles that
underlie the struggle. The recognition
of the right of all men to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
a spirit of conciliation such as Burke[41]
dreamed of, the willingness on the
part of the strong to make concessions
to the weak, the realization
that the rights of the employer are
bound up in the rights of the employed""in
these the optimist beholds
the signs of our times.

Another right which the State
has recognized as belonging to each
man is the right to an education. In
the enlightened parts of Europe and
in America every city, every town,
every village, has its school; and it
is no longer a class who have access
to knowledge, for to the children of
the poorest laborer the school-door
stands open. From the civilized nations
universal education is driving
the dull host of illiteracy.

Education broadens to include all
men, and deepens to reach all truths.
Scholars are no longer confined to
Greek, Latin and mathematics, but
they also study science; and science[42]
converts the dreams of the poet, the
theory of the mathematician and the
fiction of the economist into ships,
hospitals and instruments that enable
one skilled hand to perform the
work of a thousand. The student of
to-day is not asked if he has learned
his grammar. Is he a mere grammar-machine,
a dry catalogue of scientific
facts, or has he acquired the qualities
of manliness? His supreme lesson
is to grapple with great public
questions, to keep his mind hospitable
to new ideas and new views of
truth, to restore the finer ideals that
are lost sight of in the struggle for
wealth and to promote justice between
man and man. He learns that
there may be substitutes for human
labor""horse-power and machinery
and books; but "there are no substitutes
for common sense, patience,
integrity, courage."

Who can doubt the vastness of the[43]
achievements of education when one
considers how different the condition
of the blind and the deaf is from
what it was a century ago? They
were then objects of superstitious
pity, and shared the lowest beggar's
lot. Everybody looked upon
their case as hopeless, and this view
plunged them deeper in despair. The
blind themselves laughed in the face
of Hauy when he offered to teach
them to read. How pitiable is the
cramped sense of imprisonment in
circumstances which teaches men to
expect no good and to treat any attempt
to relieve them as the vagary
of a disordered mind! But now, behold
the transformation; see how institutions
and industrial establishments
for the blind have sprung up
as if by magic; see how many of the
deaf have learned not only to read
and write, but to speak; and remember
that the faith and patience of Dr.[44]
Howe have borne fruit in the efforts
that are being made everywhere to
educate the deaf-blind and equip
them for the struggle. Do you wonder
that I am full of hope and lifted
up?

The highest result of education is
tolerance. Long ago men fought and
died for their faith; but it took ages
to teach them the other kind of courage,""the
courage to recognize the
faiths of their brethren and their
rights of conscience. Tolerance is
the first principle of community; it
is the spirit which conserves the best
that all men think. No loss by flood
and lightning, no destruction of cities
and temples by the hostile forces
of nature, has deprived man of so
many noble lives and impulses as
those which his intolerance has destroyed.

With wonder and sorrow I go back
in thought to the ages of intolerance[45]
and bigotry. I see Jesus received with
scorn and nailed on the cross. I see
his followers hounded and tortured
and burned. I am present where the
finer spirits that revolt from the superstition
of the Middle Ages are accused
of impiety and stricken down.
I behold the children of Israel reviled
and persecuted unto death by
those who pretend Christianity with
the tongue; I see them driven from
land to land, hunted from refuge
to refuge, summoned to the felon's
place, exposed to the whip, mocked
as they utter amid the pain of martyrdom
a confession of the faith
which they have kept with such
splendid constancy. The same bigotry
that oppresses the Jews falls
tiger-like upon Christian nonconformists
of purest lives and wipes
out the Albigenses and the peaceful
Vaudois, "whose bones lie on the
mountains cold."  I see the clouds[46]
part slowly, and I hear a cry of protest
against the bigot. The restraining
hand of tolerance is laid upon the
inquisitor, and the humanist utters a
message of peace to the persecuted.
Instead of the cry, "Burn the heretic!"
men study the human soul with
sympathy, and there enters into their
hearts a new reverence for that
which is unseen.

The idea of brotherhood redawns
upon the world with a broader significance
than the narrow association
of members in a sect or creed;
and thinkers of great soul like Lessing
challenge the world to say
which is more godlike, the hatred
and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting
religions, or sweet accord
and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice
of man against his brother-man
wavers and retreats before the
radiance of a more generous sentiment,
which will not sacrifice men to[47]
forms, or rob them of the comfort and
strength they find in their own beliefs.
The heresy of one age becomes
the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance
has given place to a sentiment
of brotherhood between sincere
men of all denominations. The
optimist rejoices in the affectionate
sympathy between Catholic heart
and Protestant heart which finds a
gratifying expression in the universal
respect and warm admiration for
Leo XIII on the part of good men
the world over. The centenary celebrations
of the births of Emerson
and Channing are beautiful examples
of the tribute which men of all
creeds pay to the memory of a pure
soul.

Thus in my outlook upon our times
I find that I am glad to be a citizen
of the world, and as I regard my
country, I find that to be an American
is to be an optimist. I know the[48]
unhappy and unrighteous story of
what has been done in the Philippines
beneath our flag; but I believe
that in the accidents of statecraft the
best intelligence of the people sometimes
fails to express itself. I read in
the history of Julius Caesar that during
the civil wars there were millions
of peaceful herdsmen and laborers
who worked as long as they
could, and fled before the advance
of the armies that were led by the
few, then waited until the danger
was past, and returned to repair
damages with patient hands. So the
people are patient and honest, while
their rulers stumble. I rejoice to see
in the world and in this country a
new and better patriotism than that
which seeks the life of an enemy. It
is a patriotism higher than that of
the battle-field. It moves thousands
to lay down their lives in social service,
and every life so laid down[49]
brings us a step nearer the time
when corn-fields shall no more be
fields of battle. So when I heard of
the cruel fighting in the Philippines,[50]
I did not despair, because I knew
that the hearts of our people were
not in that fight, and that sometime
the hand of the destroyer must be
stayed.[51]

Part iii. The Practice of Optimism[52]

Part iii [53]
The Practice of Optimism

The test of all beliefs is their

practical effect in life. If it be
true that optimism compels
the world forward, and pessimism
retards it, then it is dangerous to
propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
One who believes that the pain in
the world outweighs the joy, and
expresses that unhappy conviction,
only adds to the pain. Schopenhauer
is an enemy to the race. Even if he
earnestly believed that this is the
most wretched of possible worlds,
he should not promulgate a doctrine[54]
which robs men of the incentive to
fight with circumstance. If Life gave
him ashes for bread, it was his fault.
Life is a fair field, and the right will
prosper if we stand by our guns.

Let pessimism once take hold of
the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all
vanity and vexation of spirit. There
is no cure for individual or social disorder,
except in forgetfulness and
annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and
be merry,"  says the pessimist, "for
to-morrow we die."  If I regarded my
life from the point of view of the pessimist,
I should be undone. I should
seek in vain for the light that does
not visit my eyes and the music that
does not ring in my ears. I should beg
night and day and never be satisfied.
I should sit apart in awful solitude, a
prey to fear and despair. But since I
consider it a duty to myself and to
others to be happy, I escape a misery
worse than any physical deprivation.[55]

Who shall dare let his incapacity
for hope or goodness cast a shadow
upon the courage of those who bear
their burdens as if they were privileges?
The optimist cannot fall back,
cannot falter; for he knows his neighbor
will be hindered by his failure to
keep in line. He will therefore hold
his place fearlessly and remember
the duty of silence. Sufficient unto
each heart is its own sorrow. He
will take the iron claws of circumstance
in his hand and use them as
tools to break away the obstacles
that block his path. He will work as
if upon him alone depended the establishment
of heaven on earth.

We have seen that the world's philosophers""the
Sayers of the Word""were
optimists; so also are the
men of action and achievement""the
Doers of the Word. Dr. Howe found
his way to Laura Bridgman's soul
because he began with the belief[56]
that he could reach it. English jurists
had said that the deaf-blind were
idiots in the eyes of the law. Behold
what the optimist does. He controverts
a hard legal axiom; he looks
behind the dull impassive clay and
sees a human soul in bondage, and
quietly, resolutely sets about its deliverance.
His efforts are victorious.
He creates intelligence out of idiocy
and proves to the law that the deaf-blind
man is a responsible being.

When Hauy offered to teach the
blind to read, he was met by pessimism
that laughed at his folly. Had
he not believed that the soul of man
is mightier than the ignorance that
fetters it, had he not been an optimist,
he would not have turned the
fingers of the blind into new instruments.
No pessimist ever discovered
the secrets of the stars, or sailed to
an uncharted land, or opened a new
heaven to the human spirit. St. Bernard[57]
was so deeply an optimist that
he believed two hundred and fifty enlightened
men could illuminate the
darkness which overwhelmed the
period of the Crusades; and the light
of his faith broke like a new day upon
western Europe. John Bosco, the
benefactor of the poor and the friendless
of Italian cities, was another
optimist, another prophet who, perceiving
a Divine Idea while it was
yet afar, proclaimed it to his countrymen.
Although they laughed at
his vision and called him a madman,
yet he worked on patiently, and with
the labor of his hands he maintained
a home for little street waifs. In the
fervor of enthusiasm he predicted the
wonderful movement which should
result from his work. Even in the
days before he had money or patronage,
he drew glowing pictures of the
splendid system of schools and hospitals
which should spread from one[58]
end of Italy to the other, and he lived
to see the organization of the San
Salvador Society, which was the
embodiment of his prophetic optimism.
When Dr. Seguin declared his
opinion that the feeble-minded could
be taught, again people laughed,
and in their complacent wisdom said
he was no better than an idiot himself.
But the noble optimist persevered,
and by and by the reluctant
pessimists saw that he whom they
ridiculed had become one of the
world's philanthropists. Thus the optimist
believes, attempts, achieves.
He stands always in the sunlight.
Some day the wonderful, the inexpressible,
arrives and shines upon
him, and he is there to welcome it.
His soul meets his own and beats a
glad march to every new discovery,
every fresh victory over difficulties,
every addition to human knowledge
and happiness.[59]

We have found that our great philosophers
and our great men of action
are optimists. So, too, our most
potent men of letters have been optimists
in their books and in their
lives. No pessimist ever won an audience
commensurately wide with
his genius, and many optimistic writers
have been read and admired out
of all measure to their talents, simply
because they wrote of the sunlit
side of life. Dickens, Lamb, Goldsmith,
Irving, all the well-beloved
and gentle humorists, were optimists.
Swift, the pessimist, has never
had as many readers as his towering
genius should command, and indeed,
when he comes down into our
century and meets Thackeray, that
generous optimist can hardly do him
justice. In spite of the latter-day notoriety
of the "Rubaiyat"  of Omar
Khayyam, we may set it down as a
rule that he who would be heard[60]
must be a believer, must have a fundamental
optimism in his philosophy.
He may bluster and disagree
and lament as Carlyle and Ruskin
do sometimes; but a basic confidence
in the good destiny of life and
of the world must underlie his work.

Shakespeare is the prince of optimists.
His tragedies are a revelation
of moral order. In "Lear"  and "Hamlet"
there is a looking forward to
something better, some one is left at
the end of the play to right wrong,
restore society and build the state
anew. The later plays, "The Tempest"
and "Cymbeline,"  show a beautiful,
placid optimism which delights
in reconciliations and reunions and
which plans for the triumph of external
as well as internal good.

If Browning were less difficult to
read, he would surely be the dominant
poet in this century. I feel the
ecstasy with which he exclaims,[61]
"Oh, good gigantic smile o' the
brown old earth this autumn morning!"
And how he sets my brain going
when he says, because there is
imperfection, there must be perfection;
completeness must come of incompleteness;
failure is an evidence
of triumph for the fulness of the days.
Yes, discord is, that harmony may
be; pain destroys, that health may
renew; perhaps I am deaf and blind
that others likewise afflicted may
see and hear with a more perfect
sense! From Browning I learn that
there is no lost good, and that makes
it easier for me to go at life, right or
wrong, do the best I know, and fear
not. My heart responds proudly to
his exhortation to pay gladly life's
debt of pain, darkness and cold. Lift
up your burden, it is God's gift, bear
it nobly.

The man of letters whose voice is
to prevail must be an optimist, and[62]
his voice often learns its message
from his life. Stevenson's life has become
a tradition only ten years after
his death; he has taken his place
among the heroes, the bravest man
of letters since Johnson and Lamb.
I remember an hour when I was discouraged
and ready to falter. For
days I had been pegging away at a
task which refused to get itself accomplished.
In the midst of my perplexity
I read an essay of Stevenson
which made me feel as if I had been
"outing"  in the sunshine, instead of
losing heart over a difficult task. I
tried again with new courage and
succeeded almost before I knew it.
I have failed many times since; but I
have never felt so disheartened as I
did before that sturdy preacher gave
me my lesson in the "fashion of the
smiling face."

Read Schopenhauer and Omar,
and you will grow to find the world as[63]
hollow as they find it. Read Green's
history of England, and the world is
peopled with heroes. I never knew
why Green's history thrilled me with
the vigor of romance until I read his
biography. Then I learned how his
quick imagination transfigured the
hard, bare facts of life into new and
living dreams. When he and his wife
were too poor to have a fire, he would
sit before the unlit hearth and pretend
that it was ablaze. "Drill your
thoughts,"  he said; "shut out the
gloomy and call in the bright. There
is more wisdom in shutting one's
eyes than your copybook philosophers
will allow."

Every optimist moves along with
progress and hastens it, while every
pessimist would keep the world at
a standstill. The consequence of
pessimism in the life of a nation is
the same as in the life of the individual.
Pessimism kills the instinct[64]
that urges men to struggle against
poverty, ignorance and crime, and
dries up all the fountains of joy in
the world. In imagination I leave
the country which lifts up the manhood
of the poor and I visit India,
the underworld of fatalism""where
three hundred million human beings,
scarcely men, submerged in ignorance
and misery, precipitate themselves
still deeper into the pit. Why
are they thus? Because they have for
thousands of years been the victims
of their philosophy, which teaches
them that men are as grass, and
the grass fadeth, and there is no
more greenness upon the earth. They
sit in the shadow and let the circumstances
they should master grip
them, until they cease to be Men, and
are made to dance and salaam like
puppets in a play. After a little hour
death comes and hurries them off to
the grave, and other puppets with[65]
other "pasteboard passions and desires"
take their place, and the show
goes on for centuries.

Go to India and see what sort
of civilization is developed when a
nation lacks faith in progress and
bows to the gods of darkness. Under
the influence of Brahminism genius
and ambition have been suppressed.
There is no one to befriend the poor
or to protect the fatherless and the
widow. The sick lie untended. The
blind know not how to see, nor the
deaf to hear, and they are left by the
roadside to die. In India it is a sin to
teach the blind and the deaf because
their affliction is regarded as a punishment
for offences in a previous
state of existence. If I had been born
in the midst of these fatalistic doctrines,
I should still be in darkness,
my life a desert-land where no caravan
of thought might pass between
my spirit and the world beyond.[66]

The Hindoos believe in endurance,
but not in resistance; therefore they
have been subdued by strangers.
Their history is a repetition of that
of Babylon. A nation from afar came
with speed swiftly, and none stumbled,
or slept, or slumbered, but they
brought desolation upon the land,
and took the stay and the staff from
the people, the whole stay of bread,
and the whole stay of water, the
mighty man, and the man of war,
the judge, and the prophet, and the
prudent, and the ancient, and none
delivered them. Woe, indeed, is the
heritage of those who walk sad-thoughted
and downcast through
this radiant, soul-delighting earth,
blind to its beauty and deaf to its
music, and of those who call evil
good, and good evil, and put darkness
for light, and light for darkness.

What care the weather-bronzed
sons of the West, feeding the world[67]
from the plains of Dakota, for the
Omars and the Brahmins? They
would say to the Hindoos, "Blot out
your philosophy, dead for a thousand
years, look with fresh eyes at Reality
and Life, put away your Brahmins
and your crooked gods, and
seek diligently for Vishnu the Preserver."

Optimism is the faith that leads to
achievement; nothing can be done
without hope. When our forefathers
laid the foundation of the American
commonwealths, what nerved them
to their task but a vision of a free
community? Against the cold, inhospitable
sky, across the wilderness
white with snow, where lurked the
hidden savage, gleamed the bow of
promise, toward which they set their
faces with the faith that levels mountains,
fills up valleys, bridges rivers
and carries civilization to the uttermost
parts of the earth. Although[68]
the pioneers could not build according
to the Hebraic ideal they saw,
yet they gave the pattern of all that
is most enduring in our country to-day.
They brought to the wilderness
the thinking mind, the printed book,
the deep-rooted desire for self-government
and the English common
law that judges alike the king and
the subject, the law on which rests
the whole structure of our society.

It is significant that the foundation
of that law is optimistic. In
Latin countries the court proceeds
with a pessimistic bias. The prisoner
is held guilty until he is proved innocent.
In England and the United
States there is an optimistic presumption
that the accused is innocent
until it is no longer possible to
deny his guilt. Under our system, it
is said, many criminals are acquitted;
but it is surely better so than that
many innocent persons should suffer.[69]
The pessimist cries, "There is no
enduring good in man! The tendency
of all things is through perpetual loss
to chaos in the end. If there was ever
an idea of good in things evil, it was
impotent, and the world rushes on
to ruin."  But behold, the law of the
two most sober-minded, practical
and law-abiding nations on earth
assumes the good in man and demands
a proof of the bad.

Optimism is the faith that leads
to achievement. The prophets of the
world have been of good heart, or
their standards would have stood
naked in the field without a defender.
Tolstoi's strictures lose power because
they are pessimistic. If he had
seen clearly the faults of America,
and still believed in her capacity to
overcome them, our people might
have felt the stimulation of his censure.
But the world turns its back
on a hopeless prophet and listens to[70]
Emerson who takes into account
the best qualities of the nation and
attacks only the vices which no one
can defend or deny. It listens to the
strong man, Lincoln, who in times
of doubt, trouble and need does not
falter. He sees success afar, and by
strenuous hope, by hoping against
hope, inspires a nation. Through the
night of despair he says, "All is well,"
and thousands rest in his confidence.
When such a man censures, and
points to a fault, the nation obeys,
and his words sink into the ears of
men; but to the lamentations of the
habitual Jeremiah the ear grows dull.

Our newspapers should remember
this. The press is the pulpit of the
modern world, and on the preachers
who fill it much depends. If the protest
of the press against unrighteous
measures is to avail, then for ninety-nine
days the word of the preacher
should be buoyant and of good cheer,[71]
so that on the hundredth day the
voice of censure may be a hundred
times strong. This was Lincoln's
way. He knew the people; he believed
in them and rested his faith on
the justice and wisdom of the great
majority. When in his rough and
ready way he said, "You can't fool
all the people all the time,"  he expressed
a great principle, the doctrine
of faith in human nature.

The prophet is not without honor,
save he be a pessimist. The ecstatic
prophecies of Isaiah did far more to
restore the exiles of Israel to their
homes than the lamentations of Jeremiah
did to deliver them from the
hands of evil-doers.

Even on Christmas Day do men
remember that Christ came as a prophet
of good? His joyous optimism
is like water to feverish lips, and has
for its highest expression the eight
beatitudes. It is because Christ is[72]
an optimist that for ages he has
dominated the Western world. For
nineteen centuries Christendom has
gazed into his shining face and felt
that all things work together for
good. St. Paul, too, taught the faith
which looks beyond the hardest
things into the infinite horizon of
heaven, where all limitations are lost
in the light of perfect understanding.
If you are born blind, search the
treasures of darkness. They are more
precious than the gold of Ophir. They
are love and goodness and truth and
hope, and their price is above rubies
and sapphires.

Jesus utters and Paul proclaims a
message of peace and a message of
reason, a belief in the Idea, not in
things, in love, not in conquest. The
optimist is he who sees that men's
actions are directed not by squadrons
and armies, but by moral power,
that the conquests of Alexander and[73]
Napoleon are less abiding than Newton's
and Galileo's and St. Augustine's
silent mastery of the world.
Ideas are mightier than fire and
sword. Noiselessly they propagate
themselves from land to land, and
mankind goes out and reaps the
rich harvest and thanks God; but
the achievements of the warrior are
like his canvas city, "to-day a camp,
to-morrow all struck and vanished,
a few pit-holes and heaps of straw."
This was the gospel of Jesus two
thousand years ago. Christmas Day
is the festival of optimism.

Although there are still great evils
which have not been subdued, and
the optimist is not blind to them, yet
he is full of hope. Despondency has
no place in his creed, for he believes
in the imperishable righteousness of
God and the dignity of man. History
records man's triumphant ascent.
Each halt in his progress has been[74]
but a pause before a mighty leap forward.
The time is not out of joint. If
indeed some of the temples we worshipped
in have fallen, we have built
new ones on the sacred sites loftier
and holier than those which have
crumbled. If we have lost some of
the heroic physical qualities of our
ancestors, we have replaced them
with a spiritual nobleness that turns
aside wrath and binds up the wounds
of the vanquished. All the past attainments
of man are ours; and more,
his day-dreams have become our
clear realities. Therein lies our hope
and sure faith.

As I stand in the sunshine of a sincere
and earnest optimism, my imagination
"paints yet more glorious
triumphs on the cloud-curtain of the
future."  Out of the fierce struggle
and turmoil of contending systems
and powers I see a brighter spiritual
era slowly emerge""an era in which[75]
there shall be no England, no France,
no Germany, no America, no this
people or that, but one family, the
human race; one law, peace; one
need, harmony; one means, labor;
one taskmaster, God.

If I should try to say anew the
creed of the optimist, I should say
something like this: "I believe in
God, I believe in man, I believe in the
power of the spirit. I believe it is a
sacred duty to encourage ourselves
and others; to hold the tongue from
any unhappy word against God's
world, because no man has any right
to complain of a universe which God
made good, and which thousands of
men have striven to keep good. I believe
we should so act that we may
draw nearer and more near the age
when no man shall live at his ease
while another suffers."  These are
the articles of my faith, and there
is yet another on which all depends""to[76]
bear this faith above every tempest
which overfloods it, and to make
it a principle in disaster and through
affliction. Optimism is the harmony
between man's spirit and the spirit of
God pronouncing His works good.

The End

FOOTNOTES:

Life and Letters of John Richard Green. Edited by Leslie Stephen.

[2] Address by the Hon. Carroll D. Wright before the Unitarian Conference, September, 1903.

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