own
happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind,
even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an
ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the
way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to
make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken _en passant_, without
being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are
immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinising
examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it,
as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your
self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise
fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you
breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either
forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal
questioning. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life.
And I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have but a
moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment, that is,
for the great majority of mankind.

The other important change which my opinions at this: time underwent,
was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime
necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the
individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the
ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being
for speculation and for action.

I had now learnt by experience that the passive susceptibilities needed
to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be
nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant,
lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen
before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to
consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition
both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had
consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of
cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the
faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of
the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and
philosophical creed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an
increasing degree towards whate