PESSIMISM IS INFECTIOUS

Putaruru Press, Volume XII, Issue 562, 8 March 1934, Page 1

PESSIMISM IS INFECTIOUS

TROUBLE WITH N.Z r PEOPLE Pessimism is so infectious to-day that it needs no effort to acquire. With many it has become an easy religion; with others, those fickle beings unable to resist the influence of every passing fashion, a pose; and with both kinds a great vanity. Call a pessimist a pessimist and he will shrug with righteous contempt, but call his beliefs vain and he will object. Yet pessimism and vanity walk hand in hand. “Vanity of vanities all is' vanity,” says Ecclesiastes, The Preachers, whose doctrine that there is no very definite hope of immortality, that man is in the clutches of fate, is pure pessimismI.'. 1 .'. This religion*of pessimism has a fatal attraction, especially when preached with the elo- I quence of the Persian Omar Khayyam. Human life is so short, our efforts are so feeble and often so futile. It is a terrible temptation to say with him, “that which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sup,” It is so easy to fall a victim to that vain philosophy. It has truly been said that there is no cure for pessimism’ like the study of history, and it is a prescription well worth taking regularly and more widely. Who would wish to be back a century, knowing the conditions then and now? The yearning for the “good old days” is purely sentimental, and if the yearning were fulfilled there would he much lamentation. To take just three examples: What sane modem man would follow the pessimist hack to the days of Pepys, when medical science was crude, with neither anaesthetics nor antiseptics ? or to those days when there was no legal restraint on cruelty to man or beast? What New Zealander could conscientiously choose the trials of the pipneers to the present days, depression and all? History teaches the duty of hopefulness and reminds us that events are not inevitable things, but can be shaped by courage and patience . And it is better to adopt that duty than the doctrine of the pessimist, which is not only lazy and morally pernicious, but intellectually absurd. The pessimist cries aloud that the present conditions are the worst in history; but he has either forgotten his history or does not know it. To condemn him with his own words, there is nothing new under the sun. Depressions have come and gone before like plagues, and they will go the quicker if one of the germ factors, the intolerable pessimist, with his vicious vanity, is rooted out.