The Evening dispatch. [volume] (Provo, City, Utah) 1891-1895, 1894-02-08

PESSIMISM.

weeks the question has been sprung in
our hearing-"Is it not fact that the
world is growing worse rather than
better?" This certainly is big ques-
tion, world wide problem, a question
that touches all sorts and conditions of
men. 1t may be answered from differ
ent points of view, from different
points OF view socially, politically, re-
ligiously, and even geographically
solution given in Utah would differ
very widely indeed from an answer
given in Peru, Siberia or Pekin. An
adequate reply must have breadth of
scope and impartial fairness of treat
ment, it must not be local in its data
nor too narrow in its Interpretation of
men and things, its basic facts should
at least be gathered from within the
last half CENTURY. And in this time
period the old and the new world
should receive an equal share of at
tention. A strictly scientific spirit
should guide the researches, statistics
should be tested and carefully exam
ined, general statements just as care
fully verified. if only in some such
way the last fifty years could be care
fully compared with any previous half
century of the worlds history, we per-
sonally feel that the answer would be
a negative one. The world is not grow
ing worse, no! noll not by any means.
We are aware that much can be said
by the pessimist and it is well to know
the worst, it is highly proper and in
many ways as highly beneficial that
there should be in every community a
good sprinkling of minds that are
keenly sensitive to the mumps and
measles of society and to all the mala-
dies that aff1ict the social organism.
We judge that it is to sociology as a
recently formulated science that we
are indebted for much of the informa-
ton that has settled on some thinkers
as an incubus, and given great plausi-
bility to the apparently growing pesssi-
mistic Interpretation of the worlds
current history. Such for example as
the sociological returns of the differ
ent governments OF Europe and Amer
lea during the last few weeks, show
ing as they do the trightful increase Of
suicides in Europe, and Of insanity in
America.
And again the pessimist can say and
does in his own way say, what an
irony of fate the history of the latter
half of the nineteenth century presents
to any one who can look back on the first
great international exhibition in 1851.
It seemed as if the beautiful glass
fabric, which the genius of Sir Joseph
Paxton had raised amidst the verdant
turf and outrageous elms of Hyde
park, were a modern temple of Janus,
in which the nations of the earth had
met to celebrate the Inauguration of an
era Of perpetual and universal peace.
Everything pointed to the conclusion
that both nations and rulers had be-
come wiser, and had come to see that
war was always a calamity and too
of1en a crime.
Where are those fattering visions
now2 go cGeca mems mortaliun."
How little it is given even to the most
sagacious of mortals to foresee the
course of this worlds evolution, and |
how wise the aphorism, Never proph-
esy unless you know"
Instead OF closing the temple of Janus |
the exhibition of 1851 seems to have
been the signal for throwing wide
open its portals, letting slip the dogs of
war and cheering them OF to greater
ravages than ever. Since that date
there have been eight gigantic wars in
which great powers have been engaged,
large armies brought into the field and
battles fought on scale equal to the
record in history, extending
from the Crimean war to the Ameri-
ian civil war. And from the best re-
5urns it is evident that there are now
like fifteen millions of
soldiers in the standing armies of
Europe.
When these and such like facts face
he attention of sociological thinkers
t is not to be wondered at that some
# them take sides with pessimism and
ose hope for the future of mankind.
Such writers as Carlyle have GER
ainly given enough of the dark side of
fe, but though Carlyle was undoub-
edlY great literary genius, it is not ]
MUST to say that he was dreadful !
roaker. Barren, brainless, soulless,
were the epithets he com /
lonly applied to the age in which he
wed, and his favorite simile for his !
was that of apes chat (
9ring on the shores of the Dead Sea.
oor Carlylel He suffered from chronic {
dyspepsia. Gould be have taken three !,
luare meals day and fet the better h