s enjoying it. Most of
the people in civilisation are not enjoying it. They are like people one
sees on tally-hos. They are not really enjoying what they are doing.
They enjoy thinking that other people think they are enjoying it.

The great characteristic enthusiasm of modern society, of civilisation,
the fad of showing off, of exhibiting a life instead of living it, very
largely comes, it is not too much to say, from the lack of normal
egoism, of self-joy in civilised human beings. It has come over us like
a kind of moral anaemia. People cannot get interested enough in anything
to be interested in it by themselves. Hence no great art--merely the art
which is a trick or knack of appearance. We lack great art because we do
not believe in great living.

The emphasis which would seem to be most to the point in civilisation is
that people must enjoy something, something of their very own, even if
it is only their sins, if they can do no better, and they are their own.
It would be a beginning. They could work out from that. They would get
the idea. Some one has said that people repent of their sins because
they didn't enjoy them as much as they expected to. Well, then, let them
enjoy their repentance. The great point is, in this world, that men must
get hold of reality somewhere, somehow, get the feel, the bare feel of
living before they try dying. Most of us seem to think we ought to do
them both up together. It is to be admitted that people might not do
really better things for their own joy, than for other people's, but
they would do them better. It is not the object of this book to reform
people. Reformers are sinners enjoying their own sins, who try to keep
other people from enjoying theirs. The object of this book is to inspire
people to enjoy anything, to find a principle that underlies right and
wrong both. Let people enjoy their sins, we say, if they really know how
to enjoy. The more they get the idea of enjoying anything, the more
vitally and sincerely they will run their course--turn around and enjoy
something truer and more lasting. What we all feel, what every man feels
is, that he has a personal need of daring and happy people around him,
people that are selfish enough to be alive and worth while, people that
have the habit and conviction of joy, whose joys whether they are wrong
or right are real joys to them, not shadows or shows of joys, joys that
melt away when no one is looking.

The main difficulty in