Those are the hours of life when we move and climb; not the
hours when we work, and eat, and laugh, and chat, and dine out with
a sense of well-merited content.
The value of life is not to be measured by length of days or
success or tranquillity, but by the quality of our experience, and
the degree in which we have profited by it. In the light of such a
truth as this, art seems to fade away as just a pleasant amusement
contrived by leisurely men for leisurely men.
Then, further, one grows to feel that such easy happiness as comes
to us may be little more than the sweetening of the bitter
medicine, just enough to give us courage and heart to live on; that
applies, of course, only to the commoner sorts of happiness, when
one is busy and merry and self-satisfied. Some sorts of happiness,
such as the best kind of affection, are parts of the larger
experience.
Then, if we take hold of such experience in the right way,
welcoming it as far as possible, not resisting it or trying to
beguile it or forget it, we can get to the end of our probation
quicker; if, that is, we let the truth burn into us, instead of
timidly shrinking away from it.
This seems to me the essence of true religion; the people who cling
very close to particular creeds and particular beliefs seem to me
to lose robustness; it is like trying to go to heaven in a bath-
chair! It retards rather than hastens the apprehension of the
truth.
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