It is a
strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon,
have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location
of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only
our eyes that have changed.
The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not.
Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt,
and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody,
and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican.
The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives
and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other
people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that
if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto
death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons
of God. Jesus Christ was crucified, it may be remembered, not because of
anything he said about God, but on a charge of saying that a man could
in three days pull down and rebuild the Temple. Every one of the great
revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have
been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the
slowness of men in realizing its goodness.
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