experience thus; but when they form a circle of
their own and the same expansion happens, they do as their parents
did, saying to themselves, "My parents lost my confidence by insisting
on what was not really important; but _my_ objections are reasonable
and justifiable, and my children must trust me to know what is right."

We must realise then that elasticity and sympathy are the first of
duties, and that if we embark upon the crusade of joy, we must do it
expecting to find many kinds of joy at work in the world, and some
which we cannot understand. We may of course mistrust destructive joy,
the joy of selfish pleasure, rough combativeness, foolish
wastefulness, ugly riot--all the joys that are evidently dogged by
sorrow and pain; but if we see any joy that leads to self-restraint
and energy and usefulness and activity, we must recognise it as
divine.

We may have then our private fancies, our happy pursuits, our sweet
delights; we may practise them, sure that the best proof of their
energy is that they obviously and plainly increase and multiply our
own happiness. But if we direct others at all, it must be as a
signpost, pointing to a parting of roads and making the choice clear,
and not as a policeman enforcing the majesty of our self-invented
laws.

Everything that helps us, invigorates us, comforts us, sustains us,
gives us life, is right for us; of that we need never be in any doubt,
provided always that our delight is not won at the expense of others;
and we must allow and encourage exactly the same liberty in others to
choose their own rest, their own pleasure, their own refreshment. What
would one think of a host, whose one object was to make his guests eat
and drink and do exactly what he himself enjoyed? And yet that is
precisely what many of the most conscientious people are doing all day
long, in other regions of the soul and mind.

The one thing which we have to fear, in all this, is of lapsing into
indolence and solitary enjoyment, guarding and hoarding our own
happiness. We must measure the effectiveness of our enjoyment by one
thing and one thing alone--our increase of affection and sympathy,
our interest in other minds and lives. If we only end by desiring to
be apart from it all, to gnaw the meat we have torn from life in a
secret cave of our devising, to gain serenity by indifference, then we
must put our desires aside; but if it sends us into the world with
hope and energy and interest and ab