ual and
moral quality is, so far, merely a means for rendering material
existence endurable; it will have to become itself the origin and aim
of what we must call a spiritual side of life. In the meanwhile, human
beings do not get any large proportion of their enjoyment from what
they admit to be their nobler side.

Hence it is that even when you have got rid of the mere struggle for
existence--fed, clothed, and housed your civilised savage, and secured
food, clothes, and shelter for his brood--you have by no means
provided against his destructive, pain-giving activities. He has spare
time and energy; and these he will devote, ten to one, to recreations
involving, at the best, the slaughter of harmless creatures; at the
worst, to the wasting of valuable substance, of what might be other
people's food; or else to the hurting of other people's feelings in
various games of chance or skill, particularly in the great skilled
game of brag called "Society."

Our gentlemanly ancestors, indeed, could not amuse themselves without
emptying a certain number of bottles and passing some hours under the
table; while our nimble-witted French neighbours, we are told,
included in their expenditure on convivial amusements a curious item
called _la casse_, to wit, the smashing of plates and glasses. The
Spaniards, on the other hand, have bull-fights, most shocking
spectacles, as we know, for we make it a point to witness them when
we are over there. Undoubtedly we have immensely improved in such
matters, but we need a great deal of further improvement. Most people
are safe only when at work, and become mischievous when they begin to
play. They do not know how to _kill time_ (for that is the way in
which we poor mortals regard life) without incidentally killing
something else: proximately birds and beasts, and their neighbours'
good fame; more remotely, but as surely, the constitution of their
descendants, and the possible wages of the working classes.

It is quite marvellous how little aptness there is in the existing
human being for taking pleasure either in what already exists ready to
hand, or in the making of something which had better be there; in what
can be enjoyed without diminishing the enjoyment of others, as nature,
books, art, thought, and the better qualities of one's neighbours. In
fact, one reason why there is something so morally pleasant in cricket
and football and rowing and riding and dancing, is surely that they
fur