=Moral Courage and Optimism.=--A characteristic modern development of courageousness is implied in the phrase "moral courage,"--as if all genuine courage were not moral. It means devotion to the good in the face of the customs of one's friends and associates, rather than against the attacks of one's enemies. It is willingness to brave for sake of a new idea of the good the unpopularity that attends breach of custom and convention. It is this type of heroism, manifested in integrity of memory and foresight, which wins the characteristic admiration of to-day, rather than the outward heroism of bearing wounds and undergoing physical dangers. It is _attention_ upon which the stress falls.[193] This supplies, perhaps, the best vantage point from which to survey optimism and pessimism in their direct moral bearings. The individual whose pursuit of the good is colored by honest recognition of existing and threatening evils is almost always charged with being a pessimist; with cynical delight in dwelling upon what is morbid, base, or sordid; and he is urged to be an "optimist," meaning in effect to conceal from himself and others evils that obtain. Optimism, thus conceived, is a combination of building rosy-colored castles in the air and hiding, ostrich-like, from actual facts. As a general thing, it will be those who have some interest at stake in evils remaining unperceived, and hence unremedied, who most clamor in the cause of such "optimism." Hope and aspiration, belief in the supremacy of good in spite of all evil, belief in the realizability of good in spite of all obstacles, are necessary inspirations in the life of virtue. The good can never be demonstrated to the senses, nor be proved by calculations of personal profit. It involves a radical venture of the will in the interest of what is unseen and prudentially incalculable. But such optimism of _will_, such determination of the man that, so far as his choice is concerned, only the good shall be recognized as real, is very different from a sentimental refusal to look at the realities of the situation just as they are. In fact a certain intellectual pessimism, in the sense of a steadfast willingness to uncover sore points, to acknowledge and search for abuses, to note how presumed good often serves as a cloak for actual bad, is a necessary part of the moral optimism which actively devotes itself to making the right prevail. Any other view reduces the aspiration and hope, which are the essence of moral courage, to a cheerful animal buoyancy; and, in its failure to see the evil done to others in its thoughtless pursuit of what it calls good, is nextdoor to brutality, to a brutality bathed in the atmosphere of sentimentality and flourishing the catchwords of idealism. § 3. JUSTICE