particular man, in his
relation to his master or his neighbour, to his country or his enemies,
will do well to be fiercely unsatisfied or thirsting for an angry
justice. But it is not true, no sane person can call it true, that man
as a whole in his general attitude towards the world, in his posture
towards death or green fields, towards the weather or the baby, will be
wise to cultivate dissatisfaction. In a broad estimate of our earthly
experience, the great truism on the tablet remains: he must not covet
his neighbour's ox nor his ass nor anything that is his. In highly
complex and scientific civilisations he may sometimes find himself
forced into an exceptional vigilance. But, then, in highly complex and
scientific civilisations, nine times out of ten, he only wants his own
ass back.

But I wish to urge the case for cubic content; in which (even more than
in moral content) I take a personal interest. Now, moral content has
been undervalued and neglected because of its separation from the other
meaning. It has become a negative rather than a positive thing. In some
accounts of contentment it seems to be little more than a meek despair.

But this is not the true meaning of the term; it should stand for the
idea of a positive and thorough appreciation of the content of anything;
for feeling the substance and not merely the surface of experience.
"Content" ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased;
placidly, perhaps, but still positively pleased. Being contented with
bread and cheese ought not to mean not caring what you eat. It ought
to mean caring for bread and cheese; handling and enjoying the cubic
content of the bread and cheese and adding it to your own. Being
content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and
resigned to living in it. It ought to mean appreciating what there is
to appreciate in such a position; such as the quaint and elvish slope of
the ceiling or the sublime aerial view of the opposite chimney-pots. And
in this sense contentment is a real and even an active virtue; it is not
only affirmative, but creative. The poet in the attic does not forget
the attic in poetic musings; he remembers whatever the attic has of
poetry; he realises how high, how starry, how cool, how unadorned and
simple—in short, how Attic is the attic.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of
getting out of any situation all that there is in it. I