These idealistic systems, when they reached their final point, provoked a reaction consisting in the rejection of all formulas based on speculation. They were succeeded by a dogmatic materialism, which in its turn gave place to a sceptical positivism, or rather to a form of agnosticism. Granted the impossibility of belief in the immortality of the soul or in eternal life in any shape, the philosophy regarding death was reduced to the stoical idea that our end is in harmony with the laws of nature, and that it must therefore be accepted without protest. Resignation, therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, became the watchword of human wisdom. It was only to be expected that certain courageous and independent thinkers should not agree with this conclusion, and attempt to discover some other solution of the great problem absorbing mankind. Thence arose pessimism, the philosophic theory which became so prevalent during the last century, and which claims so many adherents in the present day. Pessimism, like belief in the immortality of the soul and the advocacy of resignation to the evils which beset humanity, is the product of the East, and India was probably its nursery. A pessimistic view of life is a salient feature of Brahminism, but Buddhism develops even more fully the doctrine that everything of this world is evil. That “life is made up of suffering” is the inexhaustible theme which, whether in the shape of philosophical argument, or in the more attractive form of poetry, the Buddhist Scriptures din ceaselessly in our ears.[212] In Europe, the lyrical poets introduced the pessimistic conception of the world, attracted by its emotional appeal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Byron struck this sad note, and expressed the view in the clearest fashion, that if we weighed our hours of joy against our days of pain, we should perceive clearly that whatever our life had been it were better not have been. In the following lines his conception of life is apparent:— “Our life is a false nature,—’tis not in The harmony of things, this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies, which rain their plagues on men like dew— Disease, death, bondage—all the woes we see— And, worse, the woes we see not—which throbs through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.” “EUTHANASIA.” In chap. vi. I showed that Byron was haunted by a fear of death which ultimately led him to a recognition of the instinctive character of the feeling. He, however, like the other pessimistic poets (Leopardi), did not regard the world as being merely part of a universal system, and it was left to philosophy to come to this conclusion.