uman nature, when we play upon it this new tune, should respond kindly;
suppose no one to be damped and none exasperated by the new conditions,
the whole enterprise to be financially sound--a vaulting
supposition--and all the inhabitants to dwell together in a golden mean
of comfort: we have yet to ask ourselves if this be what man desire, or
if it be what man will even deign to accept for a continuance. It is
certain that man loves to eat, it is not certain that he loves that only
or that best. He is supposed to love comfort; it is not a love, at
least, that he is faithful to. He is supposed to love happiness; it is
my contention that he rather loves excitement. Danger, enterprise, hope,
the novel, the aleatory, are dearer to man than regular meals. He does
not think so when he is hungry, but he thinks so again as soon as he is
fed; and on the hypothesis of a successful ant-heap, he would never go
hungry. It would be always after dinner in that society, as, in the land
of the Lotos-eaters, it was always afternoon; and food, which, when we
have it not, seems all-important, drops in our esteem, as soon as we
have it, to a mere pre-requisite of living.

That for which man lives is not the same thing for all individuals nor
in all ages; yet it has a common base; what he seeks and what he must
have is that which will seize and hold his attention. Regular meals and
weather-proof lodgings will not do this long. Play in its wide sense, as
the artificial induction of sensation, including all games and all arts,
will, indeed, go far to keep him conscious of himself; but in the end he
wearies for realities. Study or experiment, to some rare natures, is the
unbroken pastime of a life. These are enviable natures; people shut in
the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man
cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical
adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and
triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to
look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the
breathing stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock
of disappointment, furious contention with obstacles: these are the true
elixir for all vital spirits, these are what they seek alike in their
romantic enterprises and their unromantic dissipations. When they are
taken in some pinch closer than the common, they cry, "Catch me here
again!" and sure enough yo