OLD JOHN, TIM, & OTHERS 155 



compulsion in the certainty that if we 

 lack "independent means" we should 

 starve if we did not work ; also, there is 

 the sense of duty to relations, friends, and 

 the Throne ; but no one, I imagine, can 

 deny that a hope of leisure and the means 

 of enjoying recreations is invariably at the 

 back of toil. It will be useless for any 

 one here to cry out " Hedonism ! " as if 

 that would blow my argument into a 

 bubble to be pricked. 'Isms, as we 

 dramatically behold when we think of the 

 economic variety now that the Anglo- 

 Saxon race has reached positions which 

 no race ever held before, do not settle any 

 problem. They are but the terminology 

 of a refined kind of wrangling, and more 

 often perpetuate errors than they destroy 

 them. If pleasures be not the end of life, 

 it is difficult to perceive that life can have 

 a purpose at all. Can this be gainsaid by 

 our own orthdox, whose constant hope is 

 heaven ; or by the Mahommedan, who 

 gladly dies in battle because the way of 

 war is the sure path to paradise ; or by 



