My own plan, which may be recommended only to those who go out
for pleasure--who value happiness above useless (otherwise
useful) knowledge, and the pictures that live and glow in
memory above albums and collections of photographs--is not to
look at a guide-book until the place it treats of has been
explored and left behind.

The practical person, to whom this may come as a new idea
and who wishes not to waste any time in experiments, would
doubtless like to hear how the plan works. He will say that
he certainly wants all the happiness to be got out of his
rambles, but it is clear that without the book in his pocket
he would miss many interesting things: Would the greater
degree of pleasure experienced in the others be a sufficient
compensation? I should say that he would gain more than he
would lose; that vivid interest and pleasure in a few things
is preferable to that fainter, more diffused feeling
experienced in the other case. Again, we have to take into
account the value to us of the mental pictures gathered in our
wanderings. For we know that only when a scene is viewed
emotionally, when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does
it become a permanent possession of the mind; in other words,
it registers an image which, when called up before the inner
eye, is capable of reproducing a measure of the original
delight.

In recalling those scenes which have given me the greatest
happiness, the images of which are most vivid and lasting, I
find that most of them are of scenes or objects which were