and then finds that the thought of the love he has slighted or
disregarded wounds and pains him, he will retrace his steps; if he
sees that his ambitions leave him no time for his enjoyment of art or
nature, and finds his success embittered by the loss of those other
enjoyments, he will curb his ambition; but in all this he will not act
anxiously and wretchedly. He will be rather like a man who has two
simultaneous pleasures offered him, one of which must exclude the
other. He will not spoil both, but take what he desires most, and
think no more of what he rejects.

The more that such a man loves life, the less is he likely to be
deceived by the shows of life; the more wisely will he judge what part
of it is worth keeping, and the less will he be tempted by anything
which distracts him from life itself. It is fulness of life, after
all, that he is aiming at, and not vacuity; and thus renunciation
becomes not a feeble withdrawal from life, but a vigorous affirmation
of the worth of it.

But of course we cannot all expect to deal with life on this
high-handed scale. The question is what most of us, who feel ourselves
sadly limited, incomplete, fractious, discontented, fitful, unequal to
the claims upon us, should do. If we have no sense of eager adventure,
but are afraid of life, overshadowed by doubts and anxieties, with no
great spring of pleasure, no passionate emotions, no very definite
ambitions, what are we then to do?

Or perhaps our case is even worse than that; we are meanly desirous of
comfort, of untroubled ease, we have a secret love of low pleasures, a
desire to gain rather than to deserve admiration and respect, a
temptation to fortify ourselves against life by accumulating all sorts
of resources, with no particular wish to share anything, but aiming to
be left alone in a circle which we can bend to our will and make
useful to us; that is the hard case of many men and women; and even if
by glimpses we see that there is a finer and a freer life outside, we
may not be conscious of any real desire to issue from our stuffy
parlour.

In either case our duty and our one hope is clear; that we have got
somehow, at all costs and hazards, to find our way into the light of
day. It is such as these, the anxious and the fearful on the one hand,
the gross and sensual on the other, who need most of all a _Joyous
Gard_ of their own. Because we are coming to the light, as Walt
Whitman so splendidly says:--"The Lord a