ve any practical
guess at the meaning of the word _life_. All literature, from Job and
Omar Khayam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman, is but an attempt to look
upon the human state with such largeness of view as shall enable us to
rise from the consideration of living to the Definition of Life. And our
sages give us about the best satisfaction in their power when they say
that it is a vapour, or a show, or made out of the same stuff with
dreams. Philosophy, in its more rigid sense, has been at the same work
for ages; and after a myriad bald heads have wagged over the problem,
and piles of words have been heaped one upon another into dry and cloudy
volumes without end, philosophy has the honour of laying before us, with
modest pride, her contribution towards the subject: that life is a
Permanent Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A man may very
well love beef, or hunting, or a woman; but surely, surely, not a
Permanent Possibility of Sensation! He may be afraid of a precipice, or
a dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an undertaker's man;
but not certainly of abstract death. We may trick with the word life in
its dozen senses until we are weary of tricking; we may argue in terms
of all the philosophies on earth, but one fact remains true
throughout--that we do not love life, in the sense that we are greatly
preoccupied about its conservation; that we do not, properly speaking,
love life at all, but living. Into the views of the least careful there
will enter some degree of providence; no man's eyes are fixed entirely
on the passing hour; but although we have some anticipation of good
health, good weather, wine, active employment, love, and self-approval,
the sum of these anticipations does not amount to anything like a
general view of life's possibilities and issues; nor are those who
cherish them most vividly at all the most scrupulous of their personal
safety. To be deeply interested in the accidents of our existence, to
enjoy keenly the mixed tenure of human experience, rather leads a man to
disregard precautions, and risk his neck against a straw. For surely the
love of living is stronger in an Alpine climber roping over a peril, or
a hunter riding merrily at a stiff fence, than in a creature who lives
upon a diet and walks a measured distance in the interest of his
constitution.

There is a great deal of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of
the matter: tearing divines reducing life to t