the same reason. The
drinking of fine wines, the tasting of delicate
food, the love of bright sights and sounds, of
beautiful women and admirable surroundings,--these
are no better for the cultivated man,
no more satisfactory as a final goal of enjoyment
for him, than the coarse amusements and
gratifications of the boor are for the man
without cultivation. There can be no final
point, for life in every form is one vast series
of fine gradations; and the man who elects to
stand still at the point of culture he has
reached, and to avow that he can go no
further, is simply making an arbitrary statement
for the excuse of his indolence. Of course
there is a possibility of declaring that the gypsy
is content in his dirt and poverty, and, because
he is so, is as great a man as the most highly
cultured. But he only is so while he is ignorant;
the moment light enters the dim mind the
whole man turns towards it. So it is on the
higher platform; only the difficulty of penetrating
the mind, of admitting the light, is even
greater. The Irish peasant loves his whiskey,
and while he can have it cares nothing for the
great laws of morality and religion which are
supposed to govern humanity and induce men
to live temperately. The cultivated gourmand
cares only for subtle tastes and perfect flavors;
but he is as blind as the merest peasant to the
fact that there is anything beyond such gratifications.
Like the boor he is deluded by a
mirage that oppresses his soul; and he fancies,
having once obtained a sensuous joy that
pleases him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction
by endless repetition, till at last he
reaches madness. The bouquet of the wine he
loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving
him with no thoughts but those of sensuous
desire; and he is in the same hopeless state
as the man who dies mad with drink. What
good has the drunkard obtained by his
madness? None; pain has at last swallowed
up pleasure utterly, and death steps in to
terminate the agony. The man suffers the final
penalty for his persistent ignorance of a law
of nature as inexorable as that of gravitation,--a
law which forbids a man to stand still.
Not twice can the same cup of pleasure be
tasted; the second time it must contain either
a grain of poison or a drop of the elixir of life.

The same argument holds good with regard
to intellectual pleasures; the same law operates.
We see men who are the flower of their
age in intellect, who pass