True optimism has nothing to do with any sort of lenient judgement. It consists in contemplating and willing the ideal in the light of a deep and self-consistent affirmation of life and the world. Because the spirit which is so directed proceeds with clear vision and impartial judgement in the valuing of all that is given, it wears to ordinary people the appearance of pessimism. That it wishes to pull down the old temples in order to build them again more magnificently is by the vulgar optimism put down to its discredit as sacrilege. The reason, then, why the only legitimate optimism, that of volition inspired by imagination, has to carry on such a hard struggle with pessimism is that it always has first to track the latter down in vulgar optimism and unmask it. That is a task which optimism has never finished, for so long as it allows the enemy to emerge in any shape there is danger for civilization. When that happens, activity in promoting the special aims of civilization always diminishes, even if satisfaction with its material achievements remains as strong as before. [pg 017] Optimism and pessimism, therefore, do not consist in counting with more or less confidence on such or such a future for the existing state of things, but in what the will desires to have as the future. They are qualities not of the judgement, but of the will. The fact that up to now that inadmissible definition of these qualities was current side by side with the correct one, so that there were four items to deal with instead of two, made the game easier for the unthinking by deceiving us about what true optimism is. Pessimism of the will they passed off as optimism of the judgement, and optimism of the will they put aside as pessimism of the judgement. These false cards must be taken from them, so that they may not continue to deceive the world in such a fashion. Optimism, Pessimism, and Ethics In what relation do optimism and pessimism stand to ethics? That close and peculiar relations do exist between them is clear from the fact that in the thought of mankind the two struggles, that for optimistic or pessimistic world-view and that about ethics, are usually involved in each other. It is the general belief that when one is being fought out the other is being fought as well. This mutual connexion is very convenient for thought. When a foundation for ethics is being laid, optimistic or pessimistic arguments are unawares pressed into the service, and _vice versâ_ ethical arguments when optimism or pessimism have to be established. In this process Western thought lays most stress on justifying a life-affirming ethical system, that is an activist one, and thinks that merely by doing so it has proved the case for optimism in its world-view. With Indian thought the most important thing is finding a logical foundation for pessimism, and the justifying of a life-denying ethical system, _i.e._ a passivist one, is rather a derivative from that.