call the Sun. Physics and chemistry take up the tale and reveal to us facts about the desk in front of us more staggering to our credulity than anything in the Arabian Nights. Then come physiology and psychology (with physics), and demonstrate that our senses do not give even the slightest idea of what the material objects about us are really like. If anyone thinks that it is only in theoretical matters that we can be so completely deceived he would do well to make a little study of the history of medicine and see how that most practical of arts was for uncounted centuries a reeking mass of errors, and how such truths as it now possesses have been wrested from nature at the cost of the suffering and premature death of millions of victims and the faithful, devoted labor of thousands of special students. Things are, in short, never what they seem. So that if life were the sort of thing the careless and unobservant take it to be, this would be the one exception to an otherwise universal rule.

If this be true the art of obtaining genuine success, of gaining happiness, must be a far more difficult matter than we commonly suppose it to be. It must require much careful examination of life, if we are to succeed in distinguishing between true and false values, in ranking them-even roughly-in the order of their importance, and in determining the extent to which the attainment of one may be incompatible with the attainment of another. It must require much knowledge of the effects of action if we are to select aright the means by which the chosen ends may be obtained. It must require much knowledge of self in order to appraise correctly the elements that go to make up our weakness and our strength, to bring to light our hidden capacities for joy, to learn to deal with failure, suffering, and all other forms of evil, and to discover in general what our resources are and how we may make the most of them, and what our dangers are and how we may escape them.

If we look about us we shall find that few persons are seriously and systematically thinking about these matters. In this respect so-called civilized man has advanced but little beyond the savage. He has gone far in his conquest of nature; he has scarcely begun upon the conquest of life. Preoccupied with the struggle for the means of happiness, most men either follow the crowd like sheep, or, like a fish, seize any bait that happens to be dangling before their eyes. The story is told of a traveler who, brought to a halt at the cross-road, and finding no signpost, is looking about for some one to direct him on his way. Presently he sees a man on horseback galloping towards him at break-neck speed. With difficulty he succeeds in bringing horse and rider to a standstill long enough to put his question, but can obtain no answer. "Where, then, are you going?" inquires the traveler, in surprise. Putting spurs to his horse, the rider shouts back from out of the enveloping cloud of dust: "I don't know where I am going, but I am going at a- of a pace." This little tale pictures with essential accuracy a great part of American, and, for that matter, European life.

The most serious of the many mistakes made about happiness are due to confusing it with success in the attainment of certain external things, things which oftentimes, doubtless, afford a certain amount of satisfaction, but which on the other hand may be, either from the start or after we have become accustomed to them, tasteless or worse. The things which are thus most frequently overvalued are luxury, success in the sense of reaching the top of the ladder," whether social or professional, and ease in the sense of freedom from work. We turn now to the first two of these, leaving the third for later study.

Luxury, in the sense in which we shall use the term, consists in the abundance of the things that minister to the pleasure of the senses. By the pleasure of the senses we mean such pleasures as those of eating and drinking, the pleasure of motion, and those derived from beautiful clothing, beautiful furniture, etc., apart from the satisfaction which the possession of them may afford to our pride.

The disadvantages or shortcomings of the pleasures of sense have been stated as follows by an Eighteenth Century English writer on ethics, William Paley, in his Moral Philosophy (Book I, ch. VI).

"1st, Those pleasures continue but a little while at a time. This is true of them all, especially of the grosser sort of them. Laying aside the preparation, and the expectation, and computing strictly the actual sensation, we shall be surprised to find how inconsiderable a portion of our time they occupy, how few hours in the four and twenty they are able to fill up.

2dly, These pleasures, by repetition, lose their relish. It is a property of the machine, for which we know no remedy, that the organs by which we perceive pleasure, are blunted and benumbed by being frequently exercised in the same way. There is hardly anyone who has not found the difference between gratification, when new, and when familiar; or any pleasure which does not become indifferent as it grows habitual.

3dly, The eagerness for high and intense delights takes away the relish from all others; and as such delights fall rarely in our way, the greater part of our time becomes from this cause empty and uneasy.

What I have been able to observe of that part of mankind whose professed pursuit is pleasure, and who are withheld in the pursuit by no restraints of fortune, or scruples of conscience, corresponds sufficiently with this account. I have commonly remarked in such men a restless and inextinguishable passion for variety; a great part of their time to be vacant, and so, much of it irksome; and that, with whatever eagerness and expectation they set out, they become, by degrees, fastidious in their choice of pleasure, languid in the enjoyment, yet miserable under the want of it.

The truth seems to be that there is a limit, at which these pleasures soon arrive, and from which they afterwards decline. They are of necessity of short duration, as the organs cannot hold on their emotions beyond a certain length of time; and if you endeavor to compensate for this imperfection in their nature by the frequency with which you repeat them, you lose more than you gain, by the fatigue of the faculties, and the diminution of sensibility.

We have said nothing in this account of the loss of opportunities, or the decay of faculties, which, whenever they happen, leave the voluptuary destitute and desperate; teased by desires that can never be gratified, and the memory of pleasures which must return no more."

The preceding statements do not mean that these pleasures are without value. It means rather that under the most favorable circumstances they can form only a small portion of a happy life.

The aesthetic pleasures, pleasure in the beautiful in nature, and in art in all its forms, have their basis in sensation, and in some of them a far larger share must be credited to sensation than certain powerful traditions have been willing to admit. It might seem, therefore, as if they were liable to the same criticisms as those presented in the preceding paragraphs. This fails to be the case only because other factors besides sensation enter and sometimes play a very important rôle. All depend, for one thing to a greater or less degree upon the activity of the intellect. This exercises itself in holding together the different parts which are taken successively (memory), in comparing the copy with the original in the imitative arts, in the work of the constructive imagination, as in building up one's conception of a character or an event from the fragmentary, incomplete accounts given by the novelist or dramatist, and in numerous other ways. Many, and indeed to a certain degree, all owe much of their glory to the emotions they arouse; and these emotions, in their turn, may be due to thoughts which the work of art or nature has awakened in the mind.

As the aesthetic pleasures involve elements which are other than sensational the imperfections of sense pleasures hold only in part for them. They are, in the first place, as permanent as any others. In the second, they are indeed subject to loss of intensity through repetition. But this is a universal rule, applying even (though in a much less degree) to many forms of pain. However, the higher the beautiful object in the scale of complexity, the less it is subject to the law of loss through repetition. Mere luxury and display soon pall. People tire of their jewels and are constantly wanting new ones, of their china, their furniture, of the expensive woods in their houses, and the like. On the other hand a lake, or a mountain presents hundreds of different aspects in the course of a year. Great music, like Beethoven's or Wagner's, partly because of its complexity, partly (as a result of this complexity) of its perennial freshness, need never tire. Cheap music, however, soon wearies its most ardent devotees. What is needed is the eye or ear that can penetrate beneath the surface and see or hear the variety of elements which any great work of nature or art contains. The power to do this is, for the average person, the result of training. Perhaps the greatest recent teacher of this art for the world of colors and forms is John Ruskin.

"High and intense delights" of all kinds tend to "take away the relish from all others," merely because of their intensity; but the fact that, the more jaded the man's palate has become through indulgence in the pleasures of sense the more unwilling, commonly, he is to turn to other sources of pleasure shows that this is not the only reason. The principal reason is that the other pleasures require activity, while the former, being passive, require no effort on his part. "When Mr. Gurney asked an intelligent foreigner who had travelled over the greater part of the world whether he had observed any one quality which, more than