And here lies the weakness of the epicurean and artistic attitude,
that it assorts so ill with the harder and grimmer facts of life.
Life has a habit of twitching away the artistic chair with all its
cushions from under one, with a rude suddenness, so that one has,
if one is wise, to learn a mental agility and to avoid the
temptation of drowsing in the land where it is always afternoon.
The real attitude is to be able to play a robust and manful part in
the world, and yet to be able to banish the thought of the bank-
book and the ledger from the mind, and to submit oneself to the
sweet influences of summer and sun.
"He who of such delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft is not unwise."
So sang the old Puritan poet; and there is a large wisdom in the
word OFT which I have abundantly envied, being myself an anxious-
minded man!
The solution is BALANCE--not to think that the repose of art is
all, and yet on the other hand not to believe that life is always
jogging and hustling one. The way in which one can test one's
progress is by considering whether activities and tiresome
engagements are beginning to fret one unduly, for if so one is
becoming a hedonist; and on the other hand by being careful to
observe whether one becomes incapable of taking a holiday; if one
becomes bored and restless and hipped in a cessation of activities,
then one is suffering from the disease of Martha in the Gospel
story; and of the two sisters we may remember that Martha was the
one who incurred a public rebuke.
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