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can hardly be said to affect the general probability of happiness, provided the utmost care is taken to guard against all discoverable risks. Nor is this all; the persons who suffer from such accidents do not invariably on that account forfeit their chance of happiness. Men of firm and indomitable will have been known to meet such unavertible shocks, and yet not succumb. Many, too, who, under the first blow of a cruel disappointment, seem plunged in an incurable despair have been known afterwards to rally, and to attain a real if a somewhat chastened form of life-satisfaction. For even though the misfortune proves decisive as to the realisation of happiness in a particular way-for example, in social position or in a congenial marriage relation—it has been found possible to fill up the remainder of life with other aims and other modes of pleasurable activity.

I have purposely reserved to the close one set of influences which appear to fall just as well under the circumstances frustrative of happiness as under the pre-conditions of any endeavour after this object. I refer to what is familiarly known as the unhappy temperament.' I think it must be conceded that there are persons whose organism and natural disposition of mind are decided obstacles to the realisation of happiness. Of the nature of this unfavourable cast of mind I shall have to speak by and by. At present it is sufficient to note the fact that many people are so constituted as not to be able to take kindly to the facts of life. They are unduly sensitive and irritable, appearing to feel pain much more acutely than pleasure; also they are gloomy, and disposed to dwell on the risks and disappointments of life rather than on its possibilities of good. Where there is this despondent temper it is hard to stimulate the spirit to any apprehension of happiness as a cheering possi

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bility; and even if the endeavour is made to realise the possibility, the peculiar sensibility to all kinds of painful impressions acts as a serious hindrance to the fruition of the object.

To determine how far these peculiarities of temperament do really prevent the attainment of happiness is no easy task. It has been said with some plausibility that happiness is much more a matter of temperament than of volition and endeavour. Yet the importance of this factor may easily be overrated. A naturally melancholy disposition is not incompatible with an energetic will, and, as a matter of fact, men who have become aware of this unfavourable influence of their innate disposition have managed, by dint of careful self-discipline and a high tension of will, to achieve the subjugation of their hidden foe and the realisation of a quiet cheerfulness and satisfaction in life.1 It is not, then, every degree of the melancholic temperament which hinders. the attainment of happiness, but only the more virulent degrees which appear to amount to a distinctly pathological phenomenon.

This, then, seems to be all that can safely be said with respect to the actual existence of happiness, as a fact both of internal and of external observation. Our conclusion is in no sense an optimist one. It is not even affirmed that happiness is more frequently found than missed; though I think there is much to be said for this proposition, provided happiness be taken in its widest sense, as covering every form of satisfaction which gives to life a bare positive value.

A recent illustration of such a noble and fairly successful attempt to overcome an organic tendency to depression may be found in the gifted German, Rahel von Varnhagen. See the work of Mrs. Vaughan Jennings, Rahel, her life and letters.'

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The difficulty in arriving at even an approximately correct view arises partly from the want of a trustworthy collection of a sufficient number of typical personal testimonies as to the felt worth of human life, partly from our ignorance of the extent to which the hindrances to happiness actually operate.

And here we naturally arrive at another stage in our inquiry. In our rough classification of the extra-human agencies which may be conceived as limiting our practical scheme of happiness, certain circumstances were marked off as seemingly fixed conditions of life, constant for all men or large masses of mankind at all times. Such are the general facts in the structure of the physical world, the comparatively fixed laws of the human organism, the regularly recurring influences of climate, &c. We found that the aggregate value of these in relation to our weal and woe is not exactly determinable, though testimony assures us that even if they amount to a balance of evil, this may be more than compensated by the positive gains of an active pursuit of happiness. On the other hand, we have dwelt on a large number of other and variable facts which clearly appear to tell against the probability of happiness. These include, first of all, those circumstances which limit the pursuit of happiness and make it, as it were, the luxury of a favoured minority, such as human ignorance, absence of mental culture, the pressure of material want, and so on. Secondly, they include those circumstances and influences which operate as frustrating forces in relation to our pursuit of happiness, such as the unforeseeable contingencies of business pursuits, the disappointments arising from others' wrong-doing, and, lastly, the inborn and inalienable stamp of individual temperament.

So far nothing has been said as to the permanence of these variable conditions. Our task was simply to note their existence and to group them under one or two rough heads. Now, however, we have reached the point at which this inquiry becomes necessary. We have done all that seems possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to read the average value of human life as it has hitherto existed. It is now time to ask how far this value is a fixed quantity for all times. In order to answer this we shall have to look again at the impediments which we have seen to stand in the way of happiness with a view to discover whether they are in their nature permanently unmodifiable by collective human effort.

This new point of view gives quite another form to our question. We have to deal no longer with Hartmann's first stage of the optimist's illusion, that happiness is already attained, but with what he calls its third stage, namely that happiness will some day be realised. It is obvious that a man may have very gloomy views respecting the hitherto condition of human life, and yet be sanguine as to its future character. Optimism with respect to the future is a very different thing from optimism with respect to the present and past. We have now to inquire how far this attitude of mind is a rational one.

QUESTION OF PROGRESS.

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CHAPTER XIII.

HAPPINESS AND PROGRESS.

THE most interesting question in relation to our subject is undoubtedly that of the worth of progress. It is here that the conflict between the despairing and the hopeful view of life becomes most intense. Both parties in the dispute are dimly aware that our final judgment respecting the worth of the world must be decided on this issue. For even if the pessimists succeed in showing that the world, as it has hitherto existed, is an appalling excess of misery, there remains the question whether this balance is a fixed quantity, or whether it may be indefinitely reduced, and even transformed into a positive remainder of good.

It is seen, too, more or less distinctly, that this question of progress, however complex it may at first sight appear, is a much more definite and tractable problem than that of the relative amounts of happiness and misery coexisting now or at any past period in the world's history. Not only so, it is recognised, by one side at least, that the former inquiry is to a large extent rendered unnecessary through the introduction of the latter question. If, the opponent of pessimism reasons, progress makes for an increase of happiness, it matters but little what are the exact proportions of joy or sorrow in the world at this fleéting point of time. Provided only happiness be shown to be possible under certain conditions, the demonstration that the onward move