prominently in the writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its
special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative
orders. Improved conduct and improved circumstances are to an English
mind the chief and almost the only measures of progress.

That this tendency is on the whole a healthy one, I, at least, firmly
believe, but it brings with it certain manifest limitations and somewhat
incapacitates men from judging other types of character and happiness.
The part that circumstances play in the formation of our characters is
indeed very manifest, and it is a humiliating truth that among these
circumstances mere bodily conditions which we share with the animals
hold a foremost place. In the long run and to the great majority of men
health is probably the most important of all the elements of happiness.
Acute physical suffering or shattered health will more than
counterbalance the best gifts of fortune, and the bias of our nature and
even the processes of our reasoning are largely influenced by physical
conditions. Hume has spoken of that 'disposition to see the favourable
rather than the unfavourable side of things which it is more happiness
to possess than to be heir to an estate of 10,000_l._ a year;' but this
gift of a happy temperament is very evidently greatly due to bodily
conditions. On the other hand, it is well known how speedily and how
powerfully bodily ailments react upon our moral natures. Every one is
aware of the morbid irritability that is produced by certain maladies of
the nerves or of the brain; of the deep constitutional depression which
often follows diseases of the liver, or prolonged sleeplessness and
other hypochondriacal maladies, and which not only deprives men of most
of their capacity of enjoyment, but also infallibly gives a colour and a
bias to their reasonings on life; of the manner in which animal passions
as well as animal spirits are affected by certain well-known conditions
of age and health. In spite of the 'coelum non animum mutant' of
Horace, few men fail to experience how different is the range of spirits
in the limbo-like atmosphere of a London winter and beneath the glories
of an Italian sky or in the keen bracing atmosphere of the mountain
side, and it is equally apparent how differently we judge the world when
we are jaded by a long spell of excessive work or refreshed after a
night of tranquil sleep. Poetry and Painting are probably not wrong in
associat