Everything confirms the fact that the subjective element in life is incomparably more important for our happiness and pleasure than the objective, from such sayings as Hunger is the best sauce, and Youth and Age cannot live together, up to the life of the Genius and the Saint.  Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king.  A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are, a moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good conscience—­these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up for or replace.  For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what he may be in the eyes of the world.  An intellectual man in complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and fancies, while no amount of diversity or social pleasure, theatres, excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard.  A good, temperate, gentle character can be happy in needy circumstances, whilst a covetous, envious and malicious man, even if he be the richest in the world, goes miserable.  Nay more; to one who has the constant delight of a special individuality, with a high degree of intellect, most of the pleasures which are run after by mankind are simply superfluous; they are even a trouble and a burden.  And so Horace says of himself, that, however many are deprived of the fancy-goods of life, there is one at least who can live without them:—­

  Gemmas, marmor, ebur, Tyrrhena sigilla, tabellas,
  Argentum, vestes, Gaetulo murice tinctas
  Sunt qui non habeant, est qui non curat habere;

and when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread out for sale, he exclaimed:  How much there is in the world I do not want.

So the first and most essential element in our life’s happiness is what we are,—­our personality, if for no other reason than that it is a constant factor coming into play under all circumstances:  besides, unlike the blessings which are described under the other two heads, it is not the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us;—­and, so far, it is endowed with an absolute value in contrast to the merely relative worth of the other two.  The consequence of this is that it is much more difficult than people commonly suppose to get a hold on a man from without.  But here the all-powerful agent, Time, comes in and claims its rights, and before its influence physical and mental advantages gradually waste away.  Moral character alone remains inaccessible to it.  In view of the destructive effect of time, it seems, indeed, as if the blessings named under the other two heads, of which time cannot directly rob us, were superior to those of the first.