This for the unfortunate.  But with the fortunate also, even those whom the inspector loves, it may not be altogether well.  It is concluded that in such a state of society, supposing it to be financially sound, the level of comfort will be high.  It does not follow:  there are strange depths of idleness in man, a too-easily-got sufficiency, as in the case of the sago-eaters, often quenching the desire for all besides; and it is possible that the men of the richest ant-heaps may sink even into squalor.  But suppose they do not; suppose our tricksy instrument of human nature, when we play upon it this new tune, should respond kindly; suppose no one to be damped and none exasperated by the new conditions, the whole enterprise to be financially sound—­a vaulting supposition—­and all the inhabitants to dwell together in a golden mean of comfort:  we have yet to ask ourselves if this be what man desire, or if it be what man will even deign to accept for a continuance.  It is certain that man loves to eat, it is not certain that he loves that only or that best.  He is supposed to love comfort; it is not a love, at least, that he is faithful to.  He is supposed to love happiness; it is my contention that he rather loves excitement.  Danger, enterprise, hope, the novel, the aleatory, are dearer to man than regular meals.  He does not think so when he is hungry, but he thinks so again as soon as he is fed; and on the hypothesis of a successful ant-heap, he would never go hungry.  It would be always after dinner in that society, as, in the land of the Lotos-eaters, it was always afternoon; and food, which, when we have it not, seems all-important, drops in our esteem, as soon as we have it, to a mere prerequisite of living.

That for which man lives is not the same thing for all individuals nor in all ages; yet it has a common base; what he seeks and what he must have is that which will seize and hold his attention.  Regular meals and weatherproof lodgings will not do this long.  Play in its wide sense, as the artificial induction of sensation, including all games and all arts, will, indeed, go far to keep him conscious of himself; but in the end he wearies for realities.  Study or experiment, to some rare natures, is the unbroken pastime of a life.  These are enviable natures; people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes:  his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing stage of life.  Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock of disappointment, furious contention with obstacles:  these are the true elixir for all vital spirits, these are what they seek alike in their romantic enterprises and their unromantic dissipations.  When they are taken in some pinch closer than the common, they