CHAPTER V.--_The Flag of the World_


When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were
called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words
myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea
of what they meant. The only thing which might be considered evident was
that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal
explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could
be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these
statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about for
other explanations. An optimist could not mean a man who thought
everything right and nothing wrong. For that is meaningless; it is like
calling everything right and nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the
conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the
pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except
himself. It would be unfair to omit altogether from the list the
mysterious but suggestive definition said to have been given by a little
girl, "An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist
is a man who looks after your feet." I am not sure that this is not the
best definition of all. There is even a sort of allegorical truth in it.
For there might, perhaps, be a profitable distinction drawn between that
more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from
moment to moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our
primary power of vision and of choice of road.

But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the