too, the effect of
over-indulgence is to vitiate and deaden the palate, so that what was
once pleasing ceases altogether to be an object of desire. This, too,
has its analogue in other things. We have a familiar example in the
excessive novel-reader, who begins with a kind of mental intoxication,
and who ends with such a weariness that he finds it a serious effort to
read the books which were once his strongest temptation.

Tastes of the palate also naturally change with age and with the
accompanying changes of the body. The schoolboy who bitterly repines
because the smallness of his allowance restricts his power of buying
tarts and sweetmeats will probably grow into a man who, with many
shillings in his pocket, daily passes the confectioner's shop without
the smallest desire to enter it.

It is evident that there is a close analogy between these things and
that collection of likes and dislikes, moral and intellectual, which
forms the primal base of character, and which mainly determines the
complexion of our lives. As Marcus Aurelius said: 'Who can change the
desires of man?' That which gives the strongest habitual pleasure,
whether it be innate or acquired, will in the great majority of cases
ultimately dominate. Certain things will always be intensely
pleasurable, and certain other things indifferent or repellent, and this
magnetism is the true basis of character, and with the majority of men
it mainly determines conduct. By the associations of youth and by other
causes these natural likings and dislikings may be somewhat modified,
but even in youth our power is very limited, and in later life it is
much less. No real believer in free-will will hold that man is an
absolute slave to his desires. No man who knows the world will deny that
with average man the strongest passion or desire will prevail--happy
when that desire is not a vice.

Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great
task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which
are most productive of happiness in life. Here, as in most other things,
opposite exaggerations are to be avoided. There is such a thing as
looking forward too rigidly and too exclusively to the future--to a
future that may never arrive. This is the great fault of the
over-educationist, who makes early life a burden and a toil, and also of
those who try to impose on youth the tastes and pleasures of the man.
Youth has its own pleasures, which