of the flesh; and hope, lingering alone in his Pandora box of troubles, saved him from utter annihilation by pointing steadily beyond the doors of death.
As a matter of fact, the abstract question of whether our present existence be enjoyable or otherwise is one which creeds do not materially modify. A pessimist may be deeply religious like Pascal and Châteaubriand, or utterly skeptical like Schopenhauer and Hartmann, or purely philosophical like faint-hearted Amiel. He may agree with Lamennais, that "man is the most suffering of all creatures;" or with Voltaire, that "happiness is a dream, and pain alone is real." He may listen to Saint Theresa, "It is given to us either to die or to suffer;" or to Leopardi, "Life is fit only to be despised." He may read in the diary of that devout recluse, Eugénie de Guérin that "dejection is the groundwork of human life;" or he may turn over the pages of Sir Walter Raleigh, and see how a typical man of the world, soldier, courtier, and navigator, can find no words ardent enough in which to praise "the workmanship of death, that finishes the sorrowful business
