f us pass by. Work is a part of life,
perhaps the essence of life; but to be absorbed in work is to be like a
man who is absorbed in collecting specimens, and never has time to sort
them. I knew of a man who determined, early in life, to write the
history of political institutions. He had a great library, and he
devoted himself to study. He put in his books, as he read them, slips
of paper to indicate passages and chapters that he would have to
consult, and as he finished with a book, he put it in a certain place
on a certain shelf. He made no other notes or references--he was a man
with a colossal memory, and he knew exactly what his markers meant. In
the middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored like a worm in a
cheese, he died. His library was sold. The markers meant nothing to any
one else; and the book-buyers merely took the markers out and threw
them away, and that was the end of the history of political
institutions.

I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to try and arrive at some
solution, to draw some sort of conclusions--to reflect, to theorise; we
may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only hope of doing so, the
only hope that humanity will do so, is for some at least to try. And
thus I think that I have perhaps been saved from a great delusion. I
was spending my time in spinning romances, in elaborating plots, in
manoeuvring life as I would; and it is not like that! Life is not run
on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor social, nor even moral lines.
It is not managed in the least as we should manage it; it is a
resultant of innumerable forces, or perhaps the same force running in
intricate currents. Of course the strange thing is that we men should
find ourselves thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement
preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed; our happiness seems
to depend upon our being, or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it
baffles us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end;
sometimes it crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and
even if we do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure;
and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by
practising indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning
ourselves to despair; only by believing that our sufferings are
fruitful, our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows
gracious, can we hope to triumph. We go on, many of us, relying on
useless d