lo_ attract us. They have the appeal of pathless mountains. It
is a curious fact, at the same time, that some of those who delight
most boldly in physical experiences turn from intellectual and
imaginative experiences with a kind of contempt. They despise from
their hearts the mollycoddle who will not risk a wound or a cold for
the pleasures of the sun and air. But, so far as the imagination is
concerned, they themselves are mollycoddles who will not venture
beyond a game of halma or a sugarstick by the hearth. What the world
of literature needs most is not cheerful writers, but adventurous
readers. The reading of poetry will become as popular as swimming when
once it is recognised that it is as natural and as exhilarating.

Literature thus justifies itself not so much by cheering us all up
when we are limp as by its appeal to the spirit of adventure, or, if
you like the phrase better, the spirit of experience. That is the
explanation of the pleasure we take in tragic literature. Tragedy
reminds certain spiritual energies in us that they are alive. It
enables them to expand, to exert themselves, to breathe freely. That
is why, in literature, it makes us happy to be miserable. To put
forth our strength, whether of limb or of imagination, makes for our
happiness far more than the passive cheerfulness of the fireside; or
if not more, at least as much. It would be ungrateful to speak
slightingly of the easy-chair and its pleasures. But the chief danger
in literature at present is not that the easy-chair will be neglected,
but that it will be given a place of far too great importance. Hence
it is necessary to emphasise the pleasures of the strenuous life in
contrast. This may seem to some readers a tolerable excuse for liking
tragedy and poetry, but a poor defence of the taste for realism,
naturalism, or whatever you like to call it. Even those who respond
immediately to the appeal of the mountains and the sea will often
resist the invitation of Zola and Huysmans and their followers to seek
adventures in the slums. They will not see that it is as natural to go
on one's travels in the slums as in the most beautiful lakeland on
earth. As a matter of fact, the discovery of the slums was one of the
most tremendous discoveries of the nineteenth century. It was one of
those revolutionary discoveries that have changed our whole view of
society. Whether it was the men of letters or the sociologists who
first discovered them I do not