The dreamer spoke to her: "Who are you, standing there in the darkness
with those eyes that I can hardly bear to look at? Who are you?"-- And
the woman answered: "Friend, I am your Conscience; I am the Truth as best
it may be seen by you. I am she whom you exist to serve."
A gleam of light, like a faint moonbeam, stole out into the garden of his
despair.
Nothing, however, is more dubious than the way in which these two words
"pessimist" and "optimist" are used; for the optimist appears to be he
who cannot bear the world as it is, and is forced by his nature to
picture it as it ought to be, and the pessimist one who cannot only bear
the world as it is, but loves it well enough to draw it faithfully.