y to and fro.

EPILOGUE

_A blunt and candid critic, commenting on Keats' famous axiom, "Beauty
is Truth, Truth Beauty," said: "Then what is the use of having two
words for the same thing?" And it is true that words cease to have any
real meaning when they are so loosely applied. The same mistake is
often made about happiness. It is supposed to be, not a quality, but a
condition, or rather an equipoise of qualities and conditions. It is
spoken of and thought of as if it were a sort of blend of virtue and
health and amusement and sunshiny weather, and no doubt it is often
found in combination with these things. But it is a separate quality,
for all that, and not merely a result of faculties and circumstances.
It is strangely and wilfully independent of its surroundings, and it is
not inconsistent with the gravest discomfort of body and even
affliction of mind. A ruinous combination of distressing circumstances
does not by any means inevitably produce unhappiness. The martyr who
sings at the stake among the flames is presumably happy. It may be said
that he balances one consideration against another, and decides that
his condition is, on the whole, enviable and delightful; but I do not
believe that it is a mental process at all, and if the martyr is happy,
he is so inevitably and instinctively. Some would urge that happiness
is only an effect, like colour. There is no colour in the dark, but as
soon as light is admitted, a thing that we call green, such as a leaf
or a wall-paper, has the power of selecting and reflecting the green
rays, and rejecting all rays that are not green. But the leaf or the
paper is not in itself green; it has only a power of seizing upon and
displaying greenness. So some would urge that temperaments are not
inherently happy, but have the power or the instinct for extracting the
happy elements out of life, and rejecting or nullifying the unhappy
elements. But this I believe to be a mistake; the happy temperament is
not necessarily made unhappy by being plunged in misfortune, while the
unhappy temperament has the power of secreting unhappiness out of the
most agreeable combination of circumstances. Every one must surely
recollect occasions in their own lives when, by all the rules of the
game, they ought to have been unhappy, while as a matter of fact they
were entirely tranquil and contented. I have been happy in a dentist's
chair, and by far the happiest holiday I ever spent in my life w