Is Life Worth Living?




CHAPTER I.

THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION.

_A change was coming over the world, the meaning and direction of
which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to
era._--Froude's _History of England_, ch. i.


What I am about to deal with in this book is a question which may well
strike many, at first sight, as a question that has no serious meaning,
or none at any rate for the sane and healthy mind. I am about to attempt
inquiring, not sentimentally, but with all calmness and sobriety, into
the true value of this human life of ours, as tried by those tests of
reality which the modern world is accepting, and to ask dispassionately
if it be really worth the living. The inquiry certainly has often been
made before; but it has never been made properly; it has never been made
in the true scientific spirit. It has always been vitiated either by
diffidence or by personal feeling; and the positive school, though they
rejoice to question everything else, have, at least in this country,
left the worth of life alone. They may now and then, perhaps, have
affected to examine it; but their examination has been merely formal,