ABSTRACT
Pessimism is very much in fashion, remarks Dr. Delon at the head of two articles on this subject in the Revue Socialist, where with considerable skill and psychological insight he traces the cause of that despairing mood peculiar to modern thought in the very condition of Society. Pessimistic mysticism, affecting moral asceticism, the "ethics of pain", is popular in England just now; it has become a habit of mind, which, like some intellectual epidemic, has made its appearance among people. Still, without some faith in the potentiality of moral progress attempts at social amelioration, however nobly conceived, would scarcely be effectively maintained. The ethical optimism of Socialists rests in an implicit belief in perfectibility of human nature. Pessimism is an excellent system of social pathology; it fails as a system of therapeutics. But Socialists are sincerely pessimistic only in their criticism of the present state of society and their prophetic utterances on its fate.
