For the case of the plain man, conscientious and able, can only too frequently be summed up thus:  Faced with the problem of existence, which is the problem of combining the largest possible amount of present satisfaction with the largest possible amount of security in the future, he has educated himself generally, and he has educated himself specially for a particular profession or trade; he has adopted the profession or trade, with all its risks and responsibilities—­risks and responsibilities which often involve the felicity of others; he has bound himself to it for life, almost irrevocably; he labours for it so many hours a day, and it occupies his thoughts for so many hours more.  Further, in the quest of satisfaction, he has taken a woman to wife and has had children.  And here it is well to note frankly that his prime object in marrying was not the woman’s happiness, but his own, and that the children came, not in order that they might be jolly little creatures, but as extensions of the father’s individuality.  The home, the environment gradually constructed for these secondary beings, constitutes another complex organization, which he superimposes on the complex organization of his profession or trade, and his brain has to carry and vitalize the two of them.  All his energies are absorbed, and they are absorbed so utterly that once a year he is obliged to take a holiday lest he should break down, and even the organization of the holiday is complex and exhausting.

Now assuming—­a tremendous assumption!—­that by all this he really is providing security for the future, what conscious direct, personal satisfaction in the present does the onerous programme actually yield?  I admit that it yields the primitive satisfaction of keeping body and soul together.  But a Hottentot in a kraal gets the same satisfaction at less expense.  I admit also that it ought theoretically to yield the conscious satisfaction which accompanies any sustained effort of the faculties.  I deny that in fact it does yield this satisfaction, for the reason that the man is too busy ever to examine the treasures of his soul.  And what else does it yield?  For what other immediate end is the colossal travail being accomplished?

Well, it may, and does, occur that the plain man is practising physical and intellectual calisthenics, and running a vast business and sending ships and men to the horizons of the earth, and keeping a home in a park, and oscillating like a rapid shuttle daily between office and home, and lying awake at nights, and losing his eyesight and his digestion, and staking his health, and risking misery for the beings whom he cherishes, and enriching insurance companies, and providing joy-rides for nice young women whom he has never seen—­and all his present profit therefrom is a game of golf with a free mind once a fortnight, or half an hour’s intimacy with his wife and a free mind once a week or so, or a ten minutes’ duel with that daughter of his and a free mind on an occasional evening!  Nay, it may occur that after forty years of incessant labour, in answer to an inquiry as to where the genuine conscious fun comes in, he has the right only to answer:  “Well, when I have time, I take the dog out for a walk.  I enjoy larking with the dog.”