"_O grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet nor relief
In word, or sigh, or tear.

* * * * *

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And life without an object cannot live._"'

And the foregoing confession is made more significant by the author's
subsequent comment on it. '_Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly
looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the
ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of
mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own.
I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that
the question was whether, if the reformers of society and government
could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were
free, and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life being no
longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures.
And I felt that unless I could see some better hope than this for human
happiness in general, my dejection must continue.'_ It is true that in
Mill's case the dejection did not continue; and that in certain ways at
which it is not yet time to touch, he succeeded, to his own
satisfaction, in finding the end he was thus asking for. I only quote
him to show how necessary he considered such an end to be. He
acknowledged the fact, not only theoretically, or with his lips, but by
months of misery, by intermittent thoughts of suicide, and by years of
recurring melancholy. Some ultimate end of action, some kind of