It is impossible to conceive that this awakening, this discovery by man of himself, will not be the beginning of his decadence; that it will not be the discovery on his part that he is a lesser and a lower thing than he thought he was, and that his condition will not sink till it tallies with his own opinion of it.
If this be really the case, we shall not be able to dispose of pessimism by calling it a disease; for the disease will be real and universal, and pessimism will be nothing but the scientific description of it.

The pessimist is only silenced by being called diseased, when it is meant that the disease imputed to him is either hypochondriacal or peculiar to himself.

But in the present case the disease is real, deep-seated, and extending steadily.

The only question for us is, is it curable or incurable?
This the event alone can answer: but as no future can be produced but through the agency of the present, the event, to a certain extent, must be in our own hands.

For us, at any rate, the first thing to be done is to face boldly our own present condition, and the causes that are producing it.