How far our Happiness depends on Nature and Fate.
To live happily, we must in the first place live. Transparent truism, but how often forgotten! How many of our pleasures tend to weaken life, rather than to strengthen and to lengthen it!
Some philosophers have found the sense of existence a sufficient synonym for happiness. Sir William Hamilton expressed this opinion with perhaps an ambiguous under-meaning when he said,—“To lead a happy life is to live all the days of one’s life;” but Dr. Johnson, moralizing on the learned pig, expanded the idea more clearly when he maintained that the mere prolongation of existence is a sufficient compensation for a very considerable amount of suffering. We see the correctness of his observation in the multitude of examples of those who cherish their years when poverty, old age, and disease would seem to have robbed them of all value. When nothing else is left but life, life alone becomes worth all else.
Self-preservation, therefore, which means the care of life and health, is the first and a necessary condition of personal happiness. But what a task is this!
When the child wakes to consciousness and surveys the scene around him, he finds himself on a battle-field divided between two mighty combatants in unremitting conflict—Necessity and Chance, the laws of Nature and the caprices of Accident. Not even the gods, said the ancient Greeks, can struggle with Fate and Fortune, those elemental powers, Anangke and Tyke. What is man that he dare venture the fray?
Each individual is scarcely more than a volume of quotations from the works of his ancestors, selected with little appropriateness to the Essay on Life which he has himself to compose. Mysterious and unrecorded influences extending over untold generations have combined to make him what he is, and to endow him with a personality which he can never escape from, nor transcend. The boy, the man, can no more run away from his parents than he can from himself. He may renounce and cast out the traits which he has inherited, but he cannot get rid of them. Unbidden and unnoticed, they will slink back and abide with him forever. They are not his servants, but belong to his family, his clan, his race. He can change or dismiss them no easier than he can the color of his skin or the shape of his skull.
These are the laws of Heredity. They bind the individual as with a tether to an immovable stake. But the tether is not a fetter. It allows him a certain freedom, so that within the limits of those laws he can wonderfully modify himself and better his fortunes. More than that, he can “cozen the gods,” and outwit both Fate and Fortune, if he sets about it right. And how is that? By learning the laws of his own nature and of the physical surroundings which environ him. Knowing them, he can turn them to his own advantage.
Let us see what these are; and first, those which concern the bodily and mental constitution of the individual, so far as they bear upon his happiness in life.
Those who have studied this subject, physicians and physiologists, draw a twofold distinction in the traits of the individual, discriminating between those which he has by birth, and those which can be traced to incidents in his own history after birth. Of the former, some are “hereditary,” that is, traceable with reasonable surety to his ancestors; and others “congenital,” meaning those which appear to be due to incidents in his own history before birth. To this latter curious class belongs the development of what anatomists call “monsters;” and there are thousands such in the moral world from allied causes, of whom the anatomist takes no heed, the whole complexion of whose lives has been changed by some light impression at this infinitely susceptible period.
Of hereditary traits, the most salient are those which stamp on the individual his racial and ethnic characteristics. He is a white man or a negro, a Mongolian or an American Indian; he is, within these limits, a Jew or a Greek, a Chinaman or a Japanese; each with his own features, color of skin, straight or crisp hair, and all the other marks, mental and physical, which belong to his particular race and people. Each one of these will help or handicap him in the pursuit of happiness.
Less prominent, but yet indefinitely potent, are those characteristics which he inherits from his family or clan, and from his immediate parents. To these he generally owes his stature, his physical strength, his symmetry and beauty, or his lack of these, his constitutional diseases, his longevity, and his language,—all mighty agents in turning the kaleidoscopic pictures of his future life. From this source he probably also derives that which physicians call his “temperament,” which is in many instances the trait which decides on his general happiness or unhappiness in life; for it is often observed that a particular temperament descends for generations in the same family.
The “congenital” peculiarities are those which especially mark the individual. Sex is one of these. Physiologists now know that the human individual commences of the neuter gender, and that the decision as to whether it shall be masculine or feminine is an incident, or more justly an accident, of its later life. Certain diseases, malformations, and bodily marks are also congenital, as well as those slight variations of the form and features which make up the physical personality; and more than all, to the obscure and momentous period when the spirit is folded in the womb does the individual owe his strongest tastes and inclinations, his talents, and, when he possesses it, the divine endowment of genius. Therefore the physicians of ancient times established the maxim,—“Ingenium est ingenitum.”
With this miscellaneous stock of heirlooms, with this farrago of festering rags and family jewels, poisoned fangs of serpents and fragments of holy crosses, ancient formulas of withering curses and saintly blessings whispered by a thousand generations of ancestors, the babe is born into the world. His one duty in life is to battle with these unseen but fateful influences, to defend his freedom against their subtle approaches, to master their armories, and to maintain and develop ever more and more his own separate individuality, utilizing his inherited powers and tendencies or destroying them, as they make for or against his own true happiness.
To accomplish this, he will call to his aid such powerful allies as education, self-training, personal hygiene, the establishment of desirable habits, and the assistance of trusty friends. By such aids he can modify his own nature, and Fate cannot wholly prevail against him. He will realize the meaning of the noble words of Buddha, the Awakened,—“Self is the Lord of Self; who else should be the Lord?”
Let us see in some detail what he has to contend with, and how he should set about it.
Nature is equitable. The more inflexible her laws, the wider the liberty they allow; the stronger the rivets of her chains, the longer they are. Thus it is that racial peculiarities, though the most indelible of all, do not stand in the way of man’s enjoyment. They do indeed limit the quality, but probably not the quantity, of pleasure in life. The race which anatomists consider the lowest, the African negroes, is famous for its gayety and buoyant spirits. Danger, poverty, even slavery, do not quench their cheery, care-free disposition. The majority of them are like Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, with naught but their good spirits to feed and clothe them. Little reck they of the future. Music and song, talk and laughter, are all they want to fill their days.
How different the American Indian! not that he is the solemn and taciturn savage whom the romance-writers depict. In his native state he is light-hearted, too; but there is one poison a single drop of which embitters all his cup of joy, the poison of restriction. Lessen his liberty ever so little, and all light is shut out of his days. Everywhere the race is the same. Its surroundings count as nothing. In the long Arctic night the Eskimo is blithe and carolsome, far from the approach of the white man; while amid the glorious scenery and Eden-like climate of Central America, the native languages have a dozen words for pain and misery and sorrow for one with any cheerful signification.
The white race has a greater range and a higher quality in sensation and emotion than any other. Modern psychologists—who are in fact physiologists—have demonstrated this by experiments. The white race alone responds to the most delicate stimuli in art, in religion, and in scientific thought; and probably its members alone are, as a race, capable of the highest degrees of happiness; though single individuals of the other races doubtless may equal them in this respect.
Let the individual of any race not despair of joy. Let him pursue it with a firm intent and a clear understanding of what it is, and he will surely receive it to the capacity of which his nature is capable. The barriers of race or nation fence him off from no flowery fields or sun-lit pastures. There are gates, if he will seek them, which open on them all.
More ominous to his welfare are the traits he inherits from his own family, his immediate ancestors. How true it is that a man’s worst enemies may be those of his own household! How dreadful it is that they may be those who love him most, who brought him into the world, who would die for him! As in Ibsen’s terrible drama, the ghosts of the follies of our fathers may ever hover near us, poisoning our blood, darkening our daylight, blighting our lives, transmitting to us the seeds of insanity, the mortal leaven of consumption, or the loathsome virus sucked from the breasts of illicit pleasure. Who can deliver us from the body of this death?
No one but ourselves. Here more than elsewhere it is vain to sit by the wayside and cry to the passers-by for aid. Scant is the consolation and slight the assistance they can proffer us. We must ourselves search the arid plains for such meagre roses and shriveled leaves as remain for us to twine the chaplets of pleasure. He who is born to an inheritance of disease—and the majority are—should boldly recognize it as his special danger, and should study the means of its prevention. If of the serious character of those I have mentioned, he should make it his main business to escape its inroads by choosing an appropriate avocation, by removal to other surroundings, and by adopting a course of life which medical science prescribes as that most likely to postpone indefinitely its outbreak. There are thousands of such wise men in every civilized community, who were born with these blood-taints, but who successfully escape them,—till they fall a victim to some other malady. Nor have these by any means the worst part of life. The habit of constant watchfulness and forethought thus engendered is one of the most valuable guarantees of personal happiness; this is why among confirmed and chronic invalids we often meet a degree of cheerfulness and even gayety which surprises us.
These beings are doubly fortunate; for they have escaped not only their particular malady, but another not less dangerous to their own well-being and that of those around them—a morbid valetudinarianism, a perpetual fussiness about their own ills and ails. The victims of this complaint are the malades imaginaires, constantly coddling themselves, thinking of no one but themselves, of whom we meet an endless number in the wealthier classes of society. It must have been of such as these that old Dr. Johnson blurted out his rough judgment,—“Every sick man is a scoundrel!” They usually forfeit more than they win by such selfish concentration. It is a symptom of disease to think constantly about one’s health. The most effectual remedy for it is to think about increasing the comfort of others.
There is no need for me to go into details of what such a training should be to protect one as much as possible against the development of hereditary diseases. The precepts must be adapted to the particular case and circumstances, and in this age Personal Hygiene is a science by itself, with abundant and competent instructors. Its scope is not limited to the prevention of disease, but extends to the strengthening and symmetrical development of the whole body. No one who intelligently pursues his happiness will omit the study and practice of its precepts. Health is not indispensable to happiness. Fortunately, no one condition is indispensable. But there is no other condition which so generally and potently contributes to it. Therefore, he who intelligently seeks enjoyment will pay early and frequent attention to athletic culture; he will seek some healthful and agreeable physical exercise; his posture will be erect and his breathing full; his periods of effort will be prolonged to positive fatigue, and will be judiciously alternated by others of changed activity or complete repose.
The trainer of athletes lays down for his pupils a rigid discipline. He is as far from encouraging overstrain and excessive exercise as he is indolence. He condemns stimulants and narcotics beyond a most moderate use; and he is solicitous about such things as sleep, and food, and cleanliness. If his pupils find it repays them to submit to his stringent dicta for the hope of winning a champion’s belt or a silver medal, is it not worth while to accept the much less severe regimen necessary to obtain the Olympian garland woven of the joys which a sound and elastic health offers?
All that I have said on this subject applies with even greater force to girls and women than it does to youths and men. Women, alas, as I have before remarked, have the worser part in life. No one but a physician sees how much of their wretchedness is owing to ignorance or neglect of the laws of physical health. There is no excuse for this in this day. The wicked old doctrine which taught that ignorance of their own nature is a necessary condition of innocence in girls ought long since to have been cast out of window. It is as false as that the seclusion of a harem is necessary to insure the virtue of wives. In nine cases out of ten a woman’s health in life depends on the care she exercises between early puberty and the birth of her first child; and this is the precise period when the prejudices of society strive to keep her in profoundest ignorance of the laws which govern her own bodily functions!
More delightful to any true woman than the pleasures of health or the praise of her faculties is the adoration compelled by her beauty. Madame de Stael regretted that she could not exchange her magnificent powers and her literary fame for the personal charms of Madame Recamier. She was right. Let no woman be persuaded to abate one jot or tittle in her cult and culture of the comely in face and form. Only cramped bigots and dull pedants cheapen the value of beauty.
Beauty is real; it is that which alone is permanent and visible; it lurks behind a thousand masks and distorted countenances, ever struggling to body itself forth; it is the manifestation of potent and mysterious natural laws, which but for it would remain forever hidden from us. Its proud power is to awaken Love with all her joyous train; and Love means the unconscious attraction of the Ideal, the noblest incitement to human endeavor.
These are not mere phrases. They are facts proved by the life-history of the human race. As nations advance in civilization from the savage condition to one of enlightenment, their ideals of physical beauty steadily near a definite and the same conception of the perfect human form, the underlying motive of which is the highest function and a perfected capacity. This progress is rapid in proportion as that which is peculiarly human in man is cultivated beyond that which is merely animal. Not that any rigid canon of proportion or mechanical norm will ever be attained; because the endeavor is toward the Ideal, and this is beyond the reach of mortals.
These are the teachings of the learned in the Science of Man; they are constantly supported by the experience of history. Beauty is and ever has been the Desire of all Nations. For it, in all time, men have counted as nought their honor, their gold, and their hopes of heaven. For it, they have poured their heart’s blood on a thousand stricken fields, and laughed at death and hell. Think you that the noblest of the race would have thus reckoned the world well lost, and paid all that, wisdom holds precious for a smile from the lips of loveliness, were there not some strange and wondrous compensation, some immortal and unearthly significance, in Beauty itself?
There is such significance, and nowhere is it so visible as in the perfect female face and form. This is the most beautiful of all objects in nature or art. To it we turn to gaze, forgetting the works of the greatest masters which may be spread before us; unmindful of the sublimest scenes which mountain and lake may combine to show us. Nearer than anything else does it bring us to that Ideal World whose margin forever recedes as we approach it; louder in its presence sound the tinkling bells of that Fairyland which guards the fruition of our sweetest hopes and dreams.
The beauty of woman has been the incentive of physical progress in the race and the inspiration of its noblest arts. It shadows forth the embodied ideal of humanity, and in its resistless strength binds men as slaves to its chariot. But does it confer happiness on the possessor? Sad and faithful is the reply of the poet—
La fatale donna di bellezza, “the fatal gift of beauty,” says the proverb of the Italians. Perilous is the path of mortals who walk too near the gods. The brightest beacons are those which most attract the foul birds of night. The men or the women who shine beyond their fellows through the bounteous gifts of nature are the chosen targets for envy and hatred and calumny and all their ugly crew. In the clash of violent emotions excited by the radiance of fair faces, in the contention of love and jealousy, despair and passion, it is rare that the cause of it all escapes scot free. Her wisdom is also weakened by the adoration she receives; she assumes that it is for herself, forgetful that a passing disease or the accident of a moment may rob her of her charms forever. She has yet to learn that those alone are worthy of admiration to whom it is not a necessity.
Thus it happens that the vis superba formæ, the “proud strength of beauty,” so often proves a fatal weakness to its possessor. American women who have followed the fortunes of generations of belles tell me that those distinguished for their physical charms have as a rule met with less success and less happiness in their after life than their plainer sisters. This is not as it should be. Regularity of features, mobility of expression, harmony of coloring, symmetry of form, and gracefulness of motion are the five sides of the mystic pentagram of beauty, and, like that of the ancient astrologers, it should have power to exorcise and banish all evil spirits, and constrain men and demons to the willing service of ennobling joys.
A beautiful woman is the nearest approach we have to the perfected ideal of humanity in general. When in their statues of Apollo, Adonis, and the Hellenized Antinous, the ancient Greek sculptors portrayed their highest conception of manly beauty, in many points they approximated the male to the female form, recognizing in the lines of the latter a superior artistic excellence and the consummate expression of the ideal of the beautiful; nay, even the embodiment of the supreme of intellectual gifts. “Something feminine,” observed Coleridge in his Table Talk, “is discoverable in the countenances of all men of genius.” Therefore the artists represent angels as of that age when the male is most similar to the female,—tra giovane e fanciullo, between youth and childhood, as Tasso describes the archangel Gabriel.
Great is the value of physical culture; but let there be no misunderstanding as to what this value is. Such culture, under whatever title it appears, is but a means to an end. They miss its meaning who make it an end in itself. Its sole worth is to aid in bringing about that mental condition or process which we term felicity, or joyousness.
This point is more easily carried in some constitutions than in others. Much depends on what is called the “temperament,” and so much has been written about temperaments that I cannot afford to omit a reference to them. To be sure, they do not fill so many pages in modern writings as in those of an earlier age; but this may be because they are not now so well marked as they once were. Functions, like fashions, are subject to the law of periodicity.
The four leading temperaments with their mental traits are as follows: the sanguine, characterized by buoyant hope and strong self-confidence; the nervous, with rapid alternations of confidence and anxiety, prone to enthusiasm and to dejection; the phlegmatic, equally remote from the extremes of exaltation and despair, collected, temperate, and slow; and the bilious, inclined to take the gloomy view of events and to dwell on their darker side.
Most people can be classed under the one or the other of these, and the arrangement is not useless in self-culture, for it will furnish hints as to the manner of training required to correct unwholesome mental tendencies.
The temperament toward which they should all be modified is not included in the list. It is the cheerful temperament, that which is lighted by the rays of reasonable hope and a confidence in one’s own powers grounded on a knowledge of their strength.
Cheerfulness, however, is a coy favorite, and is not to be had for the asking. It is a condition of mind which a man cannot think himself into, nor reason himself into, nor directly acquire by an effort of the will. No man can seat himself in his chair and say to himself,—“Go to! I will be merry!” It can in part be secured by a skillful disposition of the emotions at our command; but it is, in the main, the mental result of physical processes, and the profitable study of it must begin with these.
So very physical is it, that physiologists have undertaken to locate its exact seat in the human body. They place it in the great ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system, near the stomach and the heart, where also is located the seat of the sense of general miserableness that the French call malaise. No one feels happy in his head or in his foot; but we do speak of being light of heart, as well as heart-heavy and heart-broken. Those savage tribes who believe that the soul dwells in the pit of the stomach are not the worst physiologists.
The mental condition in certain diseases show how correct this is. Those which directly involve the stomach, the liver, the heart, and the intestinal canal are always associated with undue depression of spirits; while those which are confined to the lungs or the brain, though of the most fatal gravity, may be connected with undiminished cheerfulness. The spes phthisica, the hopefulness of the consumptive, is proverbial among physicians, but as deceptive to them as to others. A friend of mine, a medical man, who had fought this disease for three years, wrote me three days before his death, sketching a series of literary schemes which he had decided to undertake! Another malady of similar character is a variety of paralysis, always fatal, not uncommon among overworked business men of middle life. The patient will never acknowledge that he is ill or feels badly, and when so paralyzed that he cannot rise from his couch will insist that he is in splendid health and is merely lazy! How different from the dyspeptic, always magnifying his symptoms; from the hypochondriac with engorged liver; or from the sufferer from heart disease, with his long and inexplicable spells of low spirits!
The moral of these facts is evident. If we wish to have a cheerful disposition we must begin with attention to our physical functions. Even slight symptoms of dyspepsia, liver complaints, and disturbances of the digestive organs must receive appropriate treatment. In this country malarial poisoning is common, and as it spends its force on the spleen, it is always associated with low spirits. Hemorrhoids, which are usually connected with deficient action of the liver, and in women many diseases peculiar to their sex, act directly in inducing a condition of gloom and anxiety.
Of course, it is no part of my plan to suggest the proper treatment for these ails. But it does come within its purview to offer some hints to those who, without assignable physical cause, are subject to periodic depression of spirits, to what we familiarly call “an attack of the blues.”
This is generally a reaction from mental overstrain or mental lethargy,—from the too intent pursuit of an object, or from having no object to pursue. A life without leisure and a life without labor are equally fatal to cheerfulness. The hurry and rush of business affairs, the atmosphere of excitement and unrest which surrounds them, are dangerous to a mind not extremely well poised. Not less so are the alternate phases of gloom and exaltation which attend religious revivals, prayer meetings, and the various manifestations of fanaticism. “That way madness lies,” and our asylums show a heavy percentage of inmates who have lost their reason from religious excitement. The prolonged concentration of attention on one’s heavenly interests is just as detrimental as on those of this world. Self-isolation is fatal; and anxiety for self-salvation is but one of its varieties.
While the multiplicity of rapid impressions leads to exhaustion and mental lassitude, variety and novelty are desirable. Change of diet is as salutary for the mind as for the body. One should have some agreeable occupation outside of his business, to which he can turn in his leisure moments and at the time when he quits active affairs. How many have I seen with enough to retire on, but with nothing to retire to! They are the unhappiest of mortals.
An occasional fit of depression can be broken by some simple measures. The hot bath is one of these. It is highly physiological, as its imperative summons of the nervous force to the periphery of the body breaks up the stagnation about the ganglionic centres. For the same reason the cold shower is excellent. No man leaves it in the same train of thought with which he entered it. Active exercise, society, games, and amusements will occur to all. Stimulants and narcotics are perilous palliatives. Better try Lord Lytton’s advice, and resolutely attack a new language; or Ruskin’s, to drive a restless horse or sail a cranky skiff, where the least inattention to what you have in hand means immediate danger to your life. You will have no time for the blues.
Self-preservation, I have said, is the prime condition of happiness. A long life, therefore, is the desire of all sane minds. Old age, that which all abhor, is the hope of all. It alone justifies a man to himself and before others. The sage is he whose life is a consistent whole, and who carries out in his age the plans which he laid in youth. They are not many; but even they deceive us by their number. On the ocean of existence, who counts the shipwrecked? We see the votive offerings of the saved displayed with ostentation, but who notes the number of the drowned? In the scenery of the drama of human life, the most conspicuous buildings are the hospitals and asylums, and into these sooner or later most of the actors disappear.
A learned French physician has maintained that the normal duration of human life is one hundred years; only a fifth of those born reach one half that age. Longevity is partly a birthright; it runs in families; but it is still more a question of occupation, mode of life, and personal hygiene. The Jews of Frankfurt average ten years more of life than the non-Jewish citizens, because they avoid unsanitary avocations and observe wiser rules of diet. I know a skillful physician who claims that he can lengthen the life of an individual a decade beyond the average of his ancestors by a judicious system of safeguards. Such an adviser is acquainted with the special dangers to which age is exposed. He knows, for instance, that at seventy-five exposure to cold is thirty-two times more dangerous than it is at thirty years of age.
The sorrows of age are usually the returns of the investments of youth, these proving of that sort which levy assessments instead of paying dividends. “A short life and a merry one,” is the maxim of many a youngster. The hidden falsehood at the core of his philosophy is the belief that happiness belongs to youth alone. I have already referred to this dangerous fallacy. The bliss of youth, as portrayed by poets and romancers, did not belong to the youth I had, nor does it to the youths I know. The admiration of the early periods of life is one of a common class of illusions. There is greater charm in beauty half-concealed than wholly shown, in the dawn rather than in the day, in the promise of youth rather than in the maturity of manhood. Potentialities please more than actualities, because they excite our imagination and release us from the fetters of facts.
He who would work securely for his own welfare will not be led astray by the belief that any one period of life contains solely or in any large measure the enjoyments of life as a whole. He will, therefore, not eat to-day the bread of to-morrow. Rather he will consider the problem of life akin to a problem of Euclid, the quod erat demonstrandum of which is reached only in the last line. He will guard the fires of youth, that he may not in age have to sit by the cold ashes of exhausted pleasures.
Sad indeed is the fate of those men who live to outlive themselves. You find them in every community, and especially in those classes of society which offer the greatest opportunities for early liberty and enjoyment. They suffer from a kind of premature senility. They have fallen in the struggle, though they are not visibly wounded. To them, life has lost its zest and action its aim. Usually this is the result of the early exhaustion of irrational enjoyments; but it may proceed from some blow of disappointed ambition, from a violent shock to the emotions, from the vertigo of unlooked-for prosperity, or the discouragement of persistent adversity. The stroke has fallen, and no voice can awake them to action again.
The continuing satisfaction of an intense love of living,—that would be a fairly good definition of happiness, and not far from one which Fichte proposed.
Few at any age could say with Fontenelle at ninety-three,—“Had I my life to live again, I should change nothing.”
What nobler compliment could be paid a man than this, which Vittoria Colonna wrote to Michael Angelo,—“You have disposed the labor of your whole life as one single great work of art.”
No road is the right one to him who knows not whither he is going.
If you will stand in the rain, why pray the gods to keep you dry?
Many a defeat, claimed as a victory, passes for one.
Joys that are present are alone those that are real.
There is wisdom in the Spanish saying, “The water of your own village is better than the wine of Rome.”
Think over this, that Walt Whitman wrote:—
The two misfortunes of life are, that we are born young, and become old.
True, the mind of a child is a plot of virgin soil; but, like this, it is made up of strata of incalculable antiquity.
The moral lessons of our youth are like our old love letters,—carefully preserved, but never read.
Time wears out masks; the old show what they are.
The mellowest fruits of life should ripen in its autumn; but if the spring had not its seeding, and the summer its flowers, what harvest can we look for?
Many a man passes his youth in preparing misery for his age, and his age in repairing misconduct in his youth.
The old story says that the flowers you gather in Fairyland prove to be withered weeds on your return.
It is folly to be youthful unless you are young.
An old man who indulges in love-making had better derive his pleasure from his own sentiments, than from the hope that they will be reciprocated.
“Old men become frivolous,” once said to me Weir Mitchell, poet, physician, philosophic observer of life. Yes, frivolous and sense-bound. Youth is earnest and spiritual, because it is sentient of creative force.
It is with health as with money; we wait till our stock is diminishing before we give it careful attention.
A Chinese proverb says, it is easy enough to die, but difficult to die at the right time. Many a man has lived to destroy his own well-earned reputation or fortune.
The danger of shipwreck is less in mid-ocean than near shore.
Hurry to reap ruins the harvest. To garner the grain we must bide from the sowing till the seed-time.
Pleasure is an expenditure of stored force. We must save up in order to have a good time. Nature is a merciless usurer, and demands heavy interest on her advances.