Note 108 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

This pessimism, whatever some of its heralds may say, has nothing in common with the pessimism of the masters of the seventeenth century. La Fontaine and La Bruyère attribute nothing inevitable or eternal to the ills they portray. Let me also point out that in their efforts to discourage hope, the Romantics of Pessimism cannot claim (as M. Georges Goyau has pointed out to them) that they are based on Catholic tradition.