So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning satisfaction. I have had a glimpse of the shore, and can now live by the hope of reaching it. With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope. If I tried, I could not check the momentum of my first leap out of the dark to move breast forward is a habit learned suddenly at that first moment of release and rush into the light. My early experience was thus a leap from bad to good. Can any one who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist? Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. My life was without past or future death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven.
Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. As sinners stand up in meeting and testify to the goodness of God, so one who is called afflicted may rise up in gladness of conviction and testify to the goodness of life. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, - if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable.
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in the search for knowledge. It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right. The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, the prince and the chimney-sweep. Certainly most of us regard happiness as the proper end of all earthly enterprise. COULD we choose our environment, and were desire in human undertakings synonymous with endowment, all men would, I suppose, be optimists.
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