to the
interests of science and art.

* * * * *

Habit is everything. Hence to be calm and unruffled is merely to
anticipate a habit; and it is a great advantage not to need to form
it.

* * * * *

"Personality is the element of the greatest happiness." Since _pain_
and _boredom_ are the two chief enemies of human happiness, nature has
provided our personality with a protection against both. We can
ward off pain, which is more often of the mind than of the body, by
_cheerfulness_; and boredom by _intelligence_. But neither of these
is akin to the other; nay, in any high degree they are perhaps
incompatible. As Aristotle remarks, genius is allied to melancholy;
and people of very cheerful disposition are only intelligent on the
surface. The better, therefore, anyone is by nature armed against one
of these evils, the worse, as a rule, is he armed against the other.

There is no human life that is free from pain and boredom; and it is a
special favour on the part of fate if a man is chiefly exposed to the
evil against which nature has armed him the better; if fate, that is,
sends a great deal of pain where there is a very cheerful temper in
which to bear it, and much leisure where there is much intelligence,
but not _vice versa_. For if a man is intelligent, he feels pain
doubly or trebly; and a cheerful but unintellectual temper finds
solitude and unoccupied leisure altogether unendurable.

* * * * *

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters
of this world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
Nor is it otherwise in art; for there genuine work, seldom found
and still more seldom appreciated, is again and again driven out by
dullness, insipidity, and affectation.

It is just the same in the sphere of action. Most men, says Bias, are
bad. Virtue is a stranger in this world; and boundless egoism, cunning
and malice, are always the order of the day. It is wrong to deceive
the young on this point, for it will only make them feel later on that
their teachers were the first to deceive them. If the object is
to render the pupil a better man by telling him that others are
excellent, it fails; and it would be more to the purpose to say: Most
men are bad, it is for you to be better. In this way he would, at
least, be sent out into the world armed with a shrewd foresight,
instead of ha