This ugly side of mere external optimism had also shown itself in the ancient world.

About the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of pessimism, the old nature worship of the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses of optimism.

Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan.

But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof.

The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural.