And so we come at last to the art of living, which is really a very delicate balancing and comparing of reasons, an attempt, however blind and feeble, to get at happiness; and the moment that this attempt ceases and becomes merely a dull desire to be as comfortable as we can, that moment the spirit begins to go down hill, and the value of life is over; unless perhaps we learn that we cannot afford to go down hill, and that every backward step will have to be painfully retraced, somewhere or other.

What, then, I would try to persuade anyone who is listening to me is that we must use our wills somehow to try experiments, to observe, to distinguish, to follow what we think fine and beautiful.  It may be said that this is only a sort of religion, and indeed it is exactly that at which I am aiming.  It is a religion, which is within the reach of many people who cannot be touched by what is technically called religion.  Religion is a word that has unhappily become specialised.  It stands for beliefs, doctrines, ceremonies, practices.  But these may not, and indeed do not, suit many of us.  The worst of definite religions is that they are too definite.  They try to enforce upon us a belief in things which we find incredible, or perhaps think to be simply unknowable; or they make out certain practices to be important, which we do not think important.  We must never do violence to our minds and souls by professing to believe what we do not believe, or to think things certain which we honestly believe to be uncertain; but at the same time we must remember that there is always something of beauty inside every religion, because religion involves a deliberate choice of better motives and better actions, and an attempt to exclude the baser and viler elements of life.

Of course the objection to all this—­and it is a serious one—­is that people may say, “Of course I see the truth of all that, and the advantage of being actively and vividly interested in life; you might as well preach the advantage of being happy; but my own interest is fitful and occasional; sometimes for days together I have no sense of the interest or quality of anything.  I have no time, I have no one to enjoy these things with.  How am I to become what I see it would be wise to be?” It is as when the woman of Samaria said, “Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep!” It is true that civilisation does seem more and more to create men and women with these instincts, and to set them in circumstances where it is hard to gratify them.  And then such people are apt to say, “Is it after all worth while to aim at so impossible a standard?  Is it not better just to put it all aside, and make oneself as comfortable as one can?” And that is the practical answer which a good many people do make to the question; and when such people get older, they are the most discouraging of all advisers, because they ridicule the whole thing as nonsense, which young men and young women had better get out