And here is
one reason of a dozen why the world is dull to dull
persons.
*
All literature, from Job and Omar Khayam to Thomas Carlyle
or Walt Whitman, is but an attempt to look upon the human
state with such largeness of view as shall enable us to
rise from the consideration of living to the Definition of
Life. And our sages give us about the best satisfaction in
their power when they say that it is a vapour, or a show,
or made out of the same stuff with dreams. Philosophy, in
its more rigid sense, has been at the same work for ages;
and after a myriad bald heads have wagged over the problem,
and piles of words have been heaped one upon another into
dry and cloudy volumes without end, philosophy has the
honour of laying before us, with modest pride, her
contribution towards the subject: that life is a Permanent
Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A man may
very well love beef, or hunting, or a woman; but surely,
surely, not a Permanent Possibility of Sensation! He may
be afraid of a precipice, or a dentist, or a large enemy
with a club, or even an undertaker's man; but not certainly
of abstract death. We may trick with the word life in its
dozen senses until we are weary of tricking; we may argue
in terms of all the philosophies on earth, but one fact
remains true throughout--that we do not love life in the
sense that we are greatly preoccupied about its
conservation; that we do not, properly speaking, love life
at all, but living.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95