Produced by David Garcia, Stacy Brown Thellend and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? BY WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK AUTHOR OF 'THE NEW REPUBLIC' ETC. * * * * * 'Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.' 'How dieth the wise man? As the fool.... That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other, yea they have all one breath; so that man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity.' '[Greek: talaiporos ego anthropos, tis me rudetai ek tou somatos tou thanatou toutou];' * * * * * NEW YORK G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 Fifth Avenue 1879 I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK TO JOHN RUSKIN _TO JOHN RUSKIN._ My dear Mr. Ruskin,--You have given me very great pleasure by allowing me to inscribe this book to you, and for two reasons; for I have two kinds of acknowledgment that I wish to make to you--first, that of an intellectual debtor to a public teacher; secondly, that of a private friend to the kindest of private friends. The tribute I have to offer you is, it is true, a small one; and it is possibly more blessed for me to give than it is for you to receive it. In so far, at least, as I represent any influence of yours, you may very possibly not think me a satisfactory representative. But there is one fact--and I will lay all the stress I can on it--which makes me less diffident than I might be, in offering this book either to you or to the world generally. The import of the book is independent of the book itself, and of the author of it; nor do the arguments it contains stand or fall with my success in stating them; and these last at least I may associate with your name. They are not mine. I have not discovered or invented them. They are so obvious that any one who chooses may see them; and I have been only moved to meddle with them, because, from being so obvious, it seems that no one will so much as deign to look at them, or at any rate to put them together with any care or completeness. They might be before everybody's eyes; but instead they are under everybody's feet. My occupation has been merely to kneel in the mud, and to pick up the truths that are being trampled into it, by a headstrong and uneducated generation.