For the case of the plain man, conscientious and able, can only too
frequently be summed up thus: Faced with the problem of existence,
which is the problem of combining the largest possible amount of
present satisfaction with the largest possible amount of security in
the future, he has educated himself generally, and he has educated
himself specially for a particular profession or trade; he has adopted
the profession or trade, with all its risks and
responsibilities--risks and responsibilities which often involve the
felicity of others; he has bound himself to it for life, almost
irrevocably; he labours for it so many hours a day, and it occupies
his thoughts for so many hours more. Further, in the quest of
satisfaction, he has taken a woman to wife and has had children. And
here it is well to note frankly that his prime object in marrying was
not the woman's happiness, but his own, and that the children came,
not in order that they might be jolly little creatures, but as
extensions of the father's individuality. The home, the environment
gradually constructed for these secondary beings, constitutes another
complex organization, which he superimposes on the complex
organization of his profession or trade, and his brain has to carry
and vitalize the two of them. All his energies are absorbed, and they
are absorbed so utterly that once a year he is obliged to take a
holiday lest he should break down, and even the organization of the
holiday is complex and exhausting.

Now assuming--a tremendous assumption!--that by all this he really is
providing security for the future, what conscious direct, personal
satisfaction in the present does the onerous programme actually yield?
I admit that it yields the primitive satisfaction of keeping body and
soul together. But a Hottentot in a kraal gets the same satisfaction
at less expense. I admit also that it ought theoretically to yield the