THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 179 



very strongly and really in these latter days. Our age 

 has been described as an intensely artificial one, and 

 one must admit the grave truth of the assertion. Social 

 advance, it is said, has made us all more luxurious in 

 our living than was the case even a quarter of a cen- 

 tury or so gone by, and that the statement cannot 

 be gainsaid is obvious. 



People nowadays are not contented with the com- 

 paratively plain ways and works of their forefathers. 

 There is a desire, widely represented, " that the 

 nobodies among us should all be somebodies," as a 

 writer graphically puts it ; and, in the struggle to 

 evolve a social order which shall eclipse all preceding 

 states, luxury and extravagance come to the front, and 

 alter the ways of life, and that very much for the worse. 

 If any one of us chooses to appeal to his own experi- 

 ence, he may easily discover that, in countless ways, 

 in the matter of foods and drinks, clothing, amuse- 

 ments, and so forth, he is tempted in a thousand 

 directions towards needless luxury as against healthier 

 simplicity. 



This tendency must operate, I fancy, in producing 

 discontent in the case of thousands ; and life, therefore, 

 seems to fall short of satisfaction, just because our 

 ideas of what constitutes happiness and comfort have 

 become themselves essentially of an impossible type. 

 It may be that this striving after wealth and distinction 

 is, in its way, by no means a bad thing after all. What 

 one sees is, that we have to pay a certain penalty when 

 we enter upon a course of life of this kind, in respect 

 of the dissatisfaction which is sure to ensue when we 

 have to content ourselves with the lower place instead 

 of the so-called higher station. If our teachers will 

 only preach at us and to us about the simplification of 



