Pessimism as a philosophy, it has been pointed out, is the last superstition of primordial times. It is a form of egomania. From Byron to D'Annunzio pessimism filled poetry; from Werther to Sanine it has ruled fiction. It is less a philosophy than a matter of temperament. It was the mode during the last century, and as an issue is as dead as the humanitarianism that followed. Is life worth living? was properly, if somewhat cynically, answered: It depends on the liver. Pessimism is the pathetic fallacy reduced to medicinal formula. It is now merely in our stock of mental attitudes, usually a pose; when it is not, it's bound to be pathological. Yet Bossuet has spoken of "the inexorable ennui which forms the basis of life." Mr. Mallock was once accused of dilettanteism, æsthetic and ethical; nevertheless, there is no mistaking his moral earnestness at the close of Is Life Worth Living? Furthermore, he foresaw the muddle the world is making to-day in the conduct of life. All the self-complacent chatter about self-annihilation during the Buddhist upheaval some decades ago has been translated into a veritable annihilation. The holy name of Altruism--social emotion made functional--has vanished into the intense inane. The higher forms of discontent have modulated into the debasing superstition of universal slaughter. With Bergson the divinity of diving into the subconscious--what else is his intuition?--is set before the lovers of the mystic to worship. Years ago the Sufi doctrine declared that the judging faculty should be abandoned for the intuitive. Don't reason! Just dream! The poet Rogers replied to a lady who asked his religion that his was the religion of all sensible men. "And what is that?" she persisted. "That no sensible men ever tell." But Mr. Mallock has told, and four decades after his confession he is still worth rereading. CHAPTER XIV THE LOST MASTER "What's become of Waring since he gave us all the slip?" was quoted by a man at the Painters' Club the other night. What made him think of Browning, he blandly explained to the two or three chaps sitting at his table on the terrace, was not the terrific heat, but the line swam across his memory when he recalled the name of Albertus Magnus as a green meteor seen for a moment far out at sea drops into the watery void. "Who, in the name of Apollo, is Albertus Magnus?" was asked. The painter sat up. "There you are, you fellows!" he roared. "You all paint or write or spoil marble, but for the history of your art you don't care a rap." "Yes, but what has your Albertus Thingamajig to do with Browning's Waring?" "Only this," was the grumbling reply; "it is a similar case." "A story, a story!" we all cried, and settled down for a yarn; but no yarn was spun. The painter relapsed into silence, and the group gradually dissolved. We sat still, hoping against hope.