The question that haunts me, the problem I cannot disentangle, is
what is or what ought our purpose to be? What is our duty in life?
Ought we to discern a duty which lies apart from our own desires
and inclinations? The moralist says that it ought to be to help
other people; but surely that is because the people, whom by some
instinct we deem the highest, have had the irresistible desire to
help others? How many people has one ever known who have taken up
philanthropy merely from a sense of rectitude? The people who have
done most to help the world along have been the people who have had
an overwhelming natural tenderness, an overflowing love for
helpless, weak, and unhappy people. That is a thing which cannot be
simulated. One knows quite well, to put the matter simply, the
extent of one's own limitations. There are courses of action which
seem natural and easy; others which seem hard, but just possible;
others again which are frankly impossible. However noble a life,
for instance, I thought the life of a missionary or of a doctor to
be, I could not under any circumstances adopt the role of either.
There are certain things which I might force myself to do which I
do not do, and which I practically know I shall not do. And the
number of people is very small who, when circumstances suggest one
course, resolutely carry out another. The artistic life is a very
hard one to analyse, because at the outset it seems so frankly
selfish a life. One does what one most desires to do, one develops
one's own nature, its faculties and powers. If one is successful,
the most one can claim is that one has perhaps added a little to
the sum of happiness, of innocent enjoyment, that one has perhaps
increased or fed in a few people the perception of beauty. Of
course the difficulty is increased by the conventional belief that