That pleasure, as a whole, is a highly complex thing, and rests mainly
on a basis that, by a little knowledge, could be annihilated in a
moment. Tell the boy what the champagne really is, he has been praising;
and the state of his mind and face will undergo a curious
transformation. Our sense of the worth of life is similar in its
complexity to the boy's sense of the worth of his wine. Beliefs and
associations play exactly the same part in it. The beliefs in this last
case may of course be truer. The question that I have to ask is, are
they? In some individual cases certainly, they have not been. Miss
Harriet Martineau, for instance, judging life from her own experience of
it, was quite persuaded that it was a most solemn and satisfactory
thing, and she has told the world as much, in no hesitating manner. But
a part at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it was due to a
grotesque over-estimate of her own social and intellectual importance.
Here, then, was a worth in life, real enough to the person who found it,
but which a little knowledge of the world would have at once taken away
from her. Does the general reverence with which life is at present
regarded rest in any degree upon any similar misconception? And if so,
to what extent does it? Will it fall to pieces before the breath of a
larger knowledge? or has it that firm foundation in fact that will
enable it to survive in spite of all enlightenment, and perhaps even to
increase in consequence of it?

Such is the outline of the question I propose to deal with. I will now
show why it is so pressing, and why, in the present crisis of thought,
it is so needful that it should be dealt with. The first impression it
produces, as I have said, is that it is superfluous. Our belief in life
seems to rest on too wide an experience for us to entertain any genuine
doubt of the truth of it. But this first impression does not go for
much. It is a mere superficial thing, and will wear off immediately. We