The amusements of mankind, at least of the
English part of mankind, teach the same lesson. Our shooting, our
hunting, our travelling, our climbing have become laborious
pursuits. It is a common saying abroad that 'an Englishman's notion
of a holiday is a fatiguing journey;' and this is only another way
of saying that the immense energy and activity which have given us
our place in the world have in many cases descended to those who do
not find in modern life any mode of using that activity, and of
venting that energy.
Even the abstract speculations of mankind bear conspicuous traces of
the same excessive impulse. Every sort of philosophy has been
systematised, and yet as these philosophies utterly contradict one
another, most of them cannot be true. Unproved abstract principles
without number have been eagerly caught up by sanguine men, and then
carefully spun out into books and theories, which were to explain
the whole world. But the world goes clear against these
abstractions, and it must do so, as they require it to go in
antagonistic directions. The mass of a system attracts the young and
impresses the unwary; but cultivated people are very dubious about
it. They are ready to receive hints and suggestions, and the
smallest real truth is ever welcome.
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