commonsense person, hope to keep a larger proportion of good resolutions
in the future than I have kept in the past. I have tried to understand
and sympathise with my fellow creatures, and though I have not entirely
failed to do so, I have nearly failed. I am not happy and I am not
content. And if, after all these years, I am neither happy nor content,
what chance is there of my being happy and content in the second half
of my life? The realisation of part of my worldly ambition has not made
me any happier, and, therefore, it is unlikely that the realisation of
the whole of my ambition will make me any happier. My strength cannot
improve; it can only weaken; and my health likewise. I in my turn am
coming to believe--what as a youth I rejected with disdain--namely, that
happiness is what one is not, and content is what one has not. Why,
then, should I go on striving after the impossible? Why should I not let
things slide?"

Thus reflects the average successful man, and there is not one of us,
successful or unsuccessful, ambitious or unambitious, whose reflections
have not often led him to a conclusion equally dissatisfied. Why should
I or anybody pretend that this is not so?

* * * * *

And yet, in the very moment of his discouragement and of his blackest
vision of things, that man knows quite well that he will go on striving.
He knows that his instinct to strive will be stronger than his genuine
conviction that the desired end cannot be achieved. Positive though he
may be that a worldly ambition realised will produce the same
dissatisfaction as Dead Sea fruit in the mouth, he will still continue
to struggle. * * * Now you cannot argue against facts, and this is a
fact. It must be accepted. Conduct must be adjusted to it. The struggle