t it, as you said about travelling, a kind
of intoxication? I mean, may it not be right to interpose it, but yet not
right to follow it? Isn't it a selfish thing, and doesn't it do the very
thing which you often speak against--blind us to other experience, that
is?"

"Yes, there is something in that," said Father Payne. "Of course that is
always the difficulty about the artist, that he appears to live selfishly
in joy--but it applies to most things. The best you can do for the world is
often to turn your back upon it. Philanthropy is a beautiful thing in its
way, but it must be done by people who like it--it is useless if it is done
in a grim and self-penalising way. If a man is really big enough to follow
art, he had better follow it. I do not believe very much in the doctrine
that service to be useful must be painful. No one doubts that Wordsworth
gave more joy to humanity by living his own life than if he had been a
country doctor. Of course the sad part of it is when a man follows art and
does _not_ succeed in giving pleasure. But you must risk that--and a
real devotion to a thing gives the best chance of happiness to a man, and
is perhaps, too, his best chance of giving something to others. There is no
reason to think that Shakespeare was a philanthropist."

"But does that apply to things like horse-racing or golf?" said Rose.

"No, you must not pursue comfort," said Father Payne; "but I don't believe
in the theory that we have all got to set out to help other people. That
implies that a man is aware of valuable things which he has to give away.
Make friends if you can, love people if you can, but don't do it with a
sense of duty. Do what is natural and beautiful and attractive to do. Make
the little circle which surrounds you happy by sympathy and interest. Don't
deal in advice. The only advice people take is that with which they agree.
And have your own work. I think we are--many of us--afraid of enjoying
work; but in any case, if we can show other people how to perceive and
enjoy beauty, we have done a very great thing. The sense of beauty is
growing in the world. Many people are desiring it, and religion doesn't
cater for it, nor does duty cater for it. But it is the only way to make
progress--and religion has got to find out how to include beauty in its
programme, or it will be left stranded. Nothing but beauty ever lifted
people higher--the unsensuous, inexplicable charm, which makes them ashamed
of dull, ug