The utmost extreme of this early error of ours is found in our general scheme of Heaven or even of an earthly Utopia. When we give free rein to fancy in seeking to portray happiness we arrange that an individual may have everything he wants, and be provided with some eternal miracle in the way of appetite, it is to be hoped, that he may keep on wanting it! The Happy Hunting Grounds of our American savages and the old Norse Walhalla had some action in them, probably because the savage believers knew of no other way to procure food save by hunting for it. With the red man and the brawny slayer of Scandinavia, action was so intimately connected with gratification and with honour that their future state had something doing as well as eternal banqueting. But observe the more sophisticated Mohammedan Paradise, with its ecstatic debauchery, and our own Hebrew Heaven, with its music and jewelry and the chorused adoration of an oriental court,—no action is predicated of these, save that necessary to get there. We postulate rest, peace, plenty, rich and beautiful surroundings, things to have for eternal joy, not things to do. Some of our seers and philosophers have often perceived the fallacy of this belief, and have preached in various voices to the effect that man should “Act well his part—there all the honour lies.” Moreover, most of us practically find that there is more pleasure in doing what we are best fitted for than in having anything whatever; but still the dominant governing theory of humanity holds that a man’s real business is to get such and such good and that “he won’t be happy till he gets it”! I heard this theory well expressed in passing by two men in the street recently; well-dressed, important-looking, elderly men: “Yes,” said one of them, shaking a handsome cane, “they get their money all over the world and come here to spend it, to live!” A better expression of this dominant belief it would be hard to find. The immense world-wide activities of the business men alluded to were defined merely as “getting money,” and the spending of that money, the obtaining all manner of materials for consumption, was defined as “living.” Acting under this belief we see the majority of mankind using continual effort to get things for themselves and their families, and, when the things they desired are attained, yet no resultant satisfaction follows, they merely transfer the ideal and seek to get more, other, and different things. Against this tendency a minor line of philosophy has been levelled, preaching contentment, but this philosophy is still on the wrong basis, for it is still _the things_ we are told to be contented with—those we have instead of those we have not, that’s all.