The article comments on the views of sociologists on optimism and pessimism in sociological analysis. The labels "optimistic" and "pessimistic" are often applied to works of sociological analysis. Sociologist Parson's alleged optimism is held to be related to the domain assumption that the existing social system is, at the least, viable, given some reforms, and that this is a happy circumstance. There is a kind of pessimism that is based on the assumption that whether an existing social system endures or is replaced by a new one, the collective condition of mankind will be no better and, from the standpoint of both liberal and radical sociologists, may become even worse. Sociology was born and developed in an era of optimism. The early American sociologists, grand theorists all of them, dealt explicitly with the concept of progress, and in doing so most of them reflected various kinds of optimism. The optimism that fertilized the soil out of which sociology grew also nourished in literature and theology visions of unending human progress.