"Aeroplanes," we said, "may be successful, but the more successful they are, the more dangerous, and the more danger there will be of collisions--collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night." And, presto! man invents the wireless telegraph, and the entire sky can be full of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are.
Some of us have decided that we will never have anything to do with monopoly. Presto! there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type of monopolist--the man who can be rich and good; the millionaire who has invented a monopoly that serves the owners, the producers and employees, the distributors and the consumers alike. An American railway President has been saying lately that America would not have enough to eat in 2050, but it would not do to try to prove this just yet. Some one, almost any day, will invent a food that is as highly concentrated as dynamite, and the whole food supply of New York--who knows?--shall be carried around in one railway President's vest pocket.
It would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful men--the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who are merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism that consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through disagreeable facts--organize them into the other facts with which they belong and with which they work--is worthy of consideration. Many of us, who have tried optimism and pessimism both, have noticed certain things.
When one is being pessimistic, one almost always has the feeling of being rather clever. It is forced upon one a little, of course, having all those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and not really seeing through them!
So, though one ought not to, one does feel a little superior--even with the best intentions--when one is being discouraged.
But the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when one is having it that one really enjoys it, or feels in this way about it.