Perhaps the latest developed form of sorrow is the feeling of sadness which comes over one in reflecting upon pain as a universal fact of existence. The pessimistic mood, with its converse, the optimistic, as based on philosophic generalization, is certainly extremely late. Pain at pain in general, pleasure at pleasure as a purely general fact, are equally remote from primitive modes, and mark culminating phases. While, perhaps, there is a certain justification and value in being saddened by the spectacle of universal pain, yet a gravity rather than a despondency is its proper measure. Pain, punitive and premonitory, plays, as we have already noted more than once in our discussions, a most beneficent and essential part in the struggle for existence and in all the higher struggle. It is a necessary and salutary phenomenon, involved in the very nature of evolution by struggle; hence he who impugns pain and is offended at it, really impugns the psychic nature of things and desires with Schopenhauer the annihilation of will. As a matter of fact the extreme pessimistic spirit is more destructive to progress than even the most buoyant optimism, in that it nips all earnest and forceful activity in the bud. A foolishly happy-go-lucky activity is better than a paralysis of effort through conviction of its inherent painfulness and ultimate inutility. The scientific evidence, so far as we can now read it, points decisively to the belief that pain-will activity, an intense struggle, is the earliest mind, and the condition of its birth has been the law of its development, and for aught that we can see, ever will be. Into this we are born, and it is as foolish to run counter to it as to the law of gravitation. A philosophy which runs counter to reality must either build a new reality or subside; but it is most certainly to be doubted whether the philosophic spirit ever has or ever will determine a general innovation in psychic evolution. But we cannot do more than merely advert to these large questions here. With reference to the development of sorrow it is an obvious remark that much which causes grief in the earlier stages of mental growth ceases to have that effect with maturer experience. Thus the man may not notice, or may laugh at, or may feel irritation at occasions which in his early life would have wakened grief. On the contrary, much that seems grievous to the old is not so regarded by the young. In general, grief tends to become less frequent and paroxysmal, but more profound and lasting with the growth of mind.