This, then, is the only optimism that is worth the name; not the
feeble optimism that brushes away the darker side of life
impatiently and fretfully, but the optimism that dares to look
boldly into the fiercest miseries of the human spirit, and to come
back, as Perseus came, pale and smoke-stained, from the dim
underworld, and say that there is yet hope brightening on the verge
of the gloom.
What one desires, then, is an optimism which arises from taking a
wide view of things as they are, and taking the worst side into
account, not an optimism which is only made possible by wearing
blinkers. I was reading a day or two ago a suggestive and brilliant
book by one of our most prolific critics, Mr. Chesterton, on the
subject of Dickens. Mr. Chesterton is of opinion that our modern
tendency to pessimism results from our inveterate realism.
Contrasting modern fictions with the old heroic stories, he says
that we take some indecisive clerk for the subject of a story, and
call the weak-kneed cad "the hero." He seems to think that we ought
to take a larger and more robust view of human possibilities, and
keep our eyes steadily fixed upon more vigorous and generous
characters.
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