object in marrying was
not the woman's happiness, but his own, and that the children came,
not in order that they might be jolly little creatures, but as
extensions of the father's individuality. The home, the environment
gradually constructed for these secondary beings, constitutes another
complex organization, which he superimposes on the complex
organization of his profession or trade, and his brain has to carry
and vitalize the two of them. All his energies are absorbed, and they
are absorbed so utterly that once a year he is obliged to take a
holiday lest he should break down, and even the organization of the
holiday is complex and exhausting.

Now assuming--a tremendous assumption!--that by all this he really is
providing security for the future, what conscious direct, personal
satisfaction in the present does the onerous programme actually yield?
I admit that it yields the primitive satisfaction of keeping body and
soul together. But a Hottentot in a kraal gets the same satisfaction
at less expense. I admit also that it ought theoretically to yield the
conscious satisfaction which accompanies any sustained effort of the
faculties. I deny that in fact it does yield this satisfaction, for
the reason that the man is too busy ever to examine the treasures of
his soul. And what else does it yield? For what other immediate end is
the colossal travail being accomplished?

Well, it may, and does, occur that the plain man is practising
physical and intellectual calisthenics, and running a vast business
and sending ships and men to the horizons of the earth, and keeping a
home in a park, and oscillating like a rapid shuttle daily between
office and home, and lying awake at nights, and losing his eyesight
and his digestion, and staking his health, and risking misery for the
beings whom he cherishes, and enriching insurance companies, and
providing joy-rides for nice young women whom he has never seen--and
all his present profit therefrom is a game of golf with a free mind
once a fortnight, or half an hour's intimacy with his wife and a free
mind once a week or so, or a ten minutes' duel with that daughter of
his and a free mind on an occasional evening! Nay, it may occur that
after forty years of incessant labour, in answer to an inquiry as to
where the genuine conscious fun comes in, he has the right only to
answer: "Well, when I have time, I take the dog out for a walk. I
enjoy larking with the dog."

The estimable p