In view of the facts I brought together in my last chapter, there is occasion to inquire if it be possible to discover the intimate mechanism by which men arrive at a conception of life as an evil to be got rid of as quickly as possible. Why do so many think that man is less happy than the beasts, and that cultured and intelligent men are more unhappy than those who are ignorant or feeble-minded ? I have related how in a society of friends of suicide, injustice and unfaithfulness were regarded as prime factors in arousing a distaste for life. Shakspeare made Hamlet exclaim that if it were possible to put an end to our days no one would continue to live:— For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely? For Byron, besides diseases, death and slavery, the evils that we see, there are others:— And worse, the woes we see not—which throb through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. In many of his works he insists on the feeling of satiety which was almost continually upon him. Every sensation of pleasure that came to him was rapidly succeeded by a still stronger feeling of disgust. Heine thought that existence was evil and saw ... across the hard surfaces of the rocks The homes of men and the hearts of men— In the one as in the others, lies, imposture and misery. As I urged in _The Nature of Man_, consciousness of the shortness of human life has been an important factor in exciting pessimism, and we find this theme recurring in pessimistic writers. Leopardi returns to it again and again in his poems. “Falling in peril of death from some mysterious disease,” he said in his _Souvenirs_, “I lamented over my sweet youth and the flower of my poor days which was to fall so soon, and often in the midnight hours wove from my sorrows, by the pale light of my lamp, a sad poem, and in the silence of the night wept over my fleeting life, and half fainting, sang to myself my funeral song” (_loc. cit._, p. 28). The bas-relief on an ancient tomb, representing the departure of a young girl who took farewell of her friends, suggested to Leopardi the following thoughts: “Mother, who from their birth makes her family of living beings tremble and weep, Nature, monster unworthy of our praise, who brings into the world and nurtures only to kill, if the premature death of a mortal be evil, why do you bring it on so many innocent heads? If it be a good, why do you make it sad for those who go and for those left behind? Why is it the hardest grief to console? The only relief from our woes is death, death, the inevitable end, the immutable law which you have established for human beings. Why, alas, after the sad voyage of life, do you not make the arrival joyful? This certain end, this end which is in our souls all our lives, which alone can soothe our troubles, why do you drape it in black and surround it with mournful shades? Why do you make the harbour