FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42  
43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   >>   >|  
not far from any one of them, but which is practical and pressing--I might almost say portentous--and which is something literally unexampled in the past history of mankind. I am aware that this position is not only not at first sight obvious, but that, even when better understood, it will probably be called false. My first care, therefore, will be to explain it at length, and clearly. For this purpose we must consider two points in order; first, what is the exact doubt we intend to express by our question; and next, why in our day this doubt should have such a special and fresh significance. Let us then make it quite plain, at starting, that when we ask 'Is life worth living?' we are not asking whether its balance of pains is necessarily and always in excess of its balance of pleasures. We are not asking whether any one has been, or whether any one is happy. To the unjaundiced eye nothing is more clear than that happiness of various kinds has been, and is, continually attained by men. And ingenious pessimists do but waste their labour when they try to convince a happy man that he really must be miserable. What I am going to discuss is not the superfluous truism that life has been found worth living by many; but the profoundly different proposition that it ought to be found worth living by all. For this is what life is pronounced to be, when those claims are made for it that at present universally are made; when, as a general truth, it is said to be worth living; or when any of those august epithets are applied to it that are at present applied so constantly. At present, as we all know, it is called sacred, solemn, earnest, significant, and so forth. To withhold such epithets is considered a kind of blasphemy. And the meaning of all such language is this: it means that life has some deep inherent worth of its own, beyond what it can acquire or lose by the caprice of circumstance--a worth, which though it may be most fully revealed to a man, through certain forms of success, is yet not destroyed or made a minus quantity by failure. Certain forms of love, for instance, are held in a special way to reveal this worth to us; but the worth that a successful love is thus supposed to reveal is a worth that a hopeless love is supposed not to destroy. The worth is a part of life's essence, not a mere chance accident, as health or riches are; and we are supposed to lose it by no acts but our own. Now it is evident that such
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42  
43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

living

 

present

 

supposed

 

special

 

balance

 

applied

 

epithets

 

reveal

 
called
 
hopeless

solemn

 
destroy
 

constantly

 

august

 

sacred

 
general
 

successful

 
universally
 

accident

 

proposition


profoundly

 
superfluous
 

truism

 
health
 

chance

 

earnest

 
essence
 

pronounced

 

claims

 

instance


acquire
 

success

 
riches
 

destroyed

 

caprice

 

discuss

 

revealed

 

circumstance

 

inherent

 

evident


failure

 

Certain

 
withhold
 
considered
 

quantity

 

language

 

meaning

 

blasphemy

 

significant

 

explain