had so little ill-health in my life. Yet I find myself, too,
testing with some curiosity the breezy maxims of optimists. A
cheerful writer says somewhere: "Will not the future be the better
and the richer for memories of past pleasure? So surely must the
sane man feel." Well, he must be very sane indeed. It takes a very
burly philosopher to think of the future as being enriched by past
gladness, when one seems to have forfeited it, and when one is by
no means certain of getting it back. One feels bitterly how little
one appreciated it at the time; and to rejoice in reflecting how
much past happiness stands to one's credit, is a very dispassionate
attitude. I think Dante was nearer the truth when he said that "a
sorrow's crown of sorrow was remembering happier things."



February 3, 1889.


To amuse oneself--that is the difficulty. Amusements are or ought
to be the childish, irrational, savage things which a man goes on
doing and practising, in virtue, I suppose, of the noble privilege
of reason, far longer than any other animal--only YOUNG animals
amuse themselves; a dog perhaps retains the faculty longer than
most animals, but he only does it out of sympathy and
companionship, to amuse his inscrutable owner, not to amuse
himself. Amusements ought to be things which one wants to do, and
which one is slightly ashamed of doing--enough ashamed, I mean, to
give rather elaborate reasons for continuing them. If one shoots,
for instance, one ought to say that it gets one out of doors, and
that what one really enjoys is the country, and so forth.