ry effort, almost every act and thought
have been regarded, not upon their own merits or in relation to
themselves, but as means to ends. The ends, it always appeared, would
prove eminently desirable; they would give me my reward. The ends,
once they were attained, would certainly bring me peace, happiness,
fame, health, enjoyment, leisure, monetary gain, or whatever it was
they were designed to bring. I am still uncertain whether or not the
bulk of my fellow-men are similarly constituted; but I am tolerably
certain that one misses a great deal in life as the result of having
this kind of a mind.

To a great extent, for example, one misses whatever may be desirable
in the one moment of time of which we are all sure--the present. One
is not spared the worries and anxieties of the present, because they
seem to have their definite bearing upon the end in view. But the
good, the sound sweetness of the present, when it chances to be there,
so far from cherishing and savouring every fraction of it, we spare it
no more than a hurried smile in passing, as a trifling incident of our
progress toward the grand end which (just then) we have in view. And
how often time proves the end a thing which never actually draws one
breath of life; a mere embryo, a phantom, vaporous product of our own
imagination! So that for one, two, or fifty years, as the case may be,
we have derived no benefit from a number of tangible good things, by
reason of our strenuous pursuit of a shadow.

Is this a peculiar disease, or am I merely noting a characteristic of
my own which is also a characteristic of the age in which I have
lived? I wonder! It is, at all events, a way of living which involves
a rather tragical waste of the good red stuff of life; and, yes, upon
the whole it is a form of restless waste and extravagance which I
fancy is far from rare among the thinking men and women of my time.
They do not travel; they hurry from one place to another. They do not
enjoy; they pursue enjoyment. They do not rest; they arrange very
elaborately, cleverly, strenuously to catch rest--and miss it. Is it
not possible that some of us do not live, but use up all the time at
our disposal in sweating, toiling, scheming preparation for the
particular sort of life we think would suit us; the kind of life we
are aiming at; the end, in fact, in pursuit of which we expend and
exhaust our whole share of life as a means?

Though these things strike me now, it is needles