Now this is very pleasant for a time, especially if one is tired and needs a complete rest.  But after a while it becomes irksome, and one longs for a change, even if it should be for the worse.  We are floating on a sea of beneficence, in which it is impossible for us to sink.  But though one could not easily drown in the Dead Sea, one might starve.  And when goodness is of too great specific gravity it is impossible to get on in it or out of it.  This is disconcerting to one of an active disposition.  It is comforting to be told that everything is completely good, till you reflect that that is only another way of saying that nothing can be made any better, and that there is no use for you to try.

Now the idealist of the sterner sort insists on criticizing the existing world.  He refuses to call good evil or evil good.  The two things are, in his judgment, quite different.  He recognizes the existence of good, but he also recognizes the fact that there is not enough of it.  This he looks upon as a great evil which ought to be remedied.  And he is glad that he is alive at this particular juncture, in a world in which there is yet room for improvement.

* * * * *

Besides the ordinary Christian virtues I would recommend to any one, who would fit himself to live happily as well as efficiently, the cultivation of that auxiliary virtue or grace which Horace Walpole called “Serendipity.”  Walpole defined it in a letter to Sir Horace Mann:  “It is a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you; you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition.  I once read a silly fairy tale called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip.’  As their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of....  Now do you understand Serendipity?” In case the reader does not understand, Walpole goes on to define “Serendipity” as “accidental sagacity (for you must know that no discovery you are looking for comes under this description).”

I am inclined to think that in such a world as this, where our hold on all good is precarious, a man should be on the lookout for dangers.  Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for all that is worth having.  But when, prepared for the worst, he goes forward, his journey will be more pleasant if he has also a “serendipitaceous” mind.  He will then, by a sort of accidental sagacity, discover that what he encounters is much less formidable than what he feared.  Half of his enemies turn out to be friends in disguise, and half of the other half retire at his approach.  After a while such words as “impracticable” and “impossible” lose their absoluteness and become only synonyms for the relatively difficult.  He has so often found a way out, where humanly speaking there was none, that he no longer looks upon a logical dilemma as a final negation of effort.