boredom; it also wards off the pernicious effects of boredom; it keeps
us from bad company, from the many dangers, misfortunes, losses and
extravagances which the man who places his happiness entirely in the
objective world is sure to encounter, My philosophy, for instance, has
never brought me in a six-pence; but it has spared me many an expense.

The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things external to
him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the
like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the
foundation of his happiness is destroyed. In other words, his centre
of gravity is not in himself; it is constantly changing its place,
with every wish and whim. If he is a man of means, one day it will
be his house in the country, another buying horses, or entertaining
friends, or traveling,--a life, in short, of general luxury, the
reason being that he seeks his pleasure in things outside him. Like
one whose health and strength are gone, he tries to regain by the use
of jellies and drugs, instead of by developing his own vital power,
the true source of what he has lost. Before proceeding to the
opposite, let us compare with this common type the man who comes
midway between the two, endowed, it may be, not exactly with
distinguished powers of mind, but with somewhat more than the ordinary
amount of intellect. He will take a dilettante interest in art, or
devote his attention to some branch of science--botany, for example,
or physics, astronomy, history, and find a great deal of pleasure in
such studies, and amuse himself with them when external forces of
happiness are exhausted or fail to satisfy him any more. Of a man like
this it may be said that his centre of gravity is partly in himself.
But a dilettante interest in art is a very different thing from
creative activity; and an amateur pursuit of science is apt to be
superficial and not to penetrate to the heart of the matter. A man