u catch them there again--perhaps before the
week is out. It is as old as "Robinson Crusoe"; as old as man. Our race
has not been strained for all these ages through that sieve of dangers
that we call Natural Selection, to sit down with patience in the tedium
of safety; the voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our
society as it exists, the bourgeois is too much cottoned about for any
zest in living; he sits in his parlour out of reach of any danger, often
out of reach of any vicissitude but one of health; and there he yawns.
If the people in the next villa took pot-shots at him, he might be
killed indeed, but so long as he escaped he would find his blood
oxygenated and his views of the world brighter. If Mr. Mallock, on his
way to the publishers, should have his skirts pinned to a wall by a
javelin, it would not occur to him--at least for several hours--to ask
if life were worth living; and if such peril were a daily matter, he
would ask it never more; he would have other things to think about, he
would be living indeed--not lying in a box with cotton, safe, but
immeasurably dull. The aleatory, whether it touch life, or fortune, or
renown--whether we explore Africa or only toss for halfpence--that is
what I conceive men to love best, and that is what we are seeking to
exclude from men's existences. Of all forms of the aleatory, that which
most commonly attends our working men--the danger of misery from want of
work--is the least inspiriting: it does not whip the blood, it does not
evoke the glory of contest; it is tragic, but it is passive; and yet, in
so far as it is aleatory, and a peril sensibly touching them, it does
truly season the men's lives. Of those who fail, I do not speak--despair
should be sacred; but to those who even modestly succeed, the changes of
their life bring interest: a job found, a shilling saved, a dainty
earned, all these are wells of pleasure springing afresh for the
successful poor; and it is not from these but from the villa-dweller
that we hear complaints of the unworthiness of life. Much, then, as the
average of the proletariat would gain in this new state of life, they
would also lose a certain something, which would not be missed in the
beginning, but would be missed progressively and progressively lamented.
Soon there would be a looking back: there would be tales of the old
world humming in young men's ears, tales of the tramp and the pedlar,
and the hopeful emigrant. And in th