Optimism; The Lesson of Ages (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1860. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... SECTION XIV. THE FINITE CANNOT BE PERFECTLY HAPPY. This brings us to where we shall boldly declare that none of these aches and fears and discontents are of themselves evils in the world; but they comprise the lower half of a necessary and beautiful variety, better than any supposable monotony without them. The only evil is the necessity that, if we exist at all, we must be less than God--an evil without the scope of omnipotence or benevolence, and a misfortune attributable to divine malice only when men shall prefer nonentity to life. If any man did ever so prefer we know it not; but we know that to most men the thought were madness. The ancient wished that he never had been born; yet he lived to glorify God's providence. The point is beyond controversy, save by inference; and we pass on to find benevolence in the method of our existence, rather than in the fact. It is not generally the pain, the labor, the care, and fear, in themselves, which trouble man and make him speculate: he has seen some good, some compensation for each one of these: evil is not a practical, so much as a theoretical problem. We cry out, " If God can make us happy, why cannot he leave us so ?--all this ingenious utility, variety, beauty, mitigation, and compensation--they amount to no prime and satisfying reason why there should be any pain or discontent whatsoever."--"We answer, Though God be the perfection of all benevolence and power, he cannot make man continually happy. The God within us knows the God without us, and the pent essence struggles for the level of its source. Our ideals despise us: nor can we go so high but we can see something higher. We shall not complain of God; but God in us shall complain--complain at confinement, complain at imperfection, complain at our finitude ...