The "body filled" and the "vacant mind" make up for the "distressful bread". It is as well, that is, to have no wants except the want of mere physical comfort, as to have higher wants and the means of gratifying them, and yet to be saddled with the anxieties and responsibilities which the higher position involves. The doctrine, "I am not really better off than you," is, indeed, not a very graceful one from those who are actually better off. There was some excuse for the fox who said the grapes were sour when he could not get them; it argued a judicious desire to make the best of things: but if he made the remark while he was comfortably chewing them, by way of pacifying the grapeless foxes, we should have thought him a more objectionable hypocrite. The pauper may fairly reply, "If you really mean that your wealth brings no happiness, why don't you change places with me?" I will, therefore, not defend the statement, considered as an exhortation to content; but I accept it as a recognition of the obvious fact, that if happiness means a satisfaction of all our desires, a man of small means may be as happy as the man of the greatest means, if his desires are limited in proportion. But is it for our happiness to increase them? Does our principle hold when we suppose a man to have the necessary sensibilities for the actual enjoyment of wealth? If he acquires the tastes which imply greater intellectual cultivation, a power, therefore, of taking into account sources of pleasure more complex and more distant in time and space, does it then become true that his power of using wealth will be indefinite? I should reply, in the first place, that we must still admit the same psychological truth. Any desire whatever, that is, is capable of yielding only a strictly finite amount of enjoyment; the pleasure which we can derive from it must be limited both by the necessity of gratifying other desires and by the fact that no desire whatever is capable of an indefinite increase by increased stimulation. After a certain point of excitement is reached, we cannot get more pleasure by any accumulation of internal conditions. We assume for the present that our aim is simply to extract the greatest possible amount of gratification out of life. We must then take for our data our actual constitution, capacities, sensibilities, and so forth, and calculate how much wealth could be actually applied in order to keep us moving always along the line of maximum enjoyment. This would be to study the art of life on purely hedonistic principles. We should ask, what career will on the whole be fullest of enjoyment? and then, what material conditions can enable us to follow that career? I imagine that the amount requisite would vary indefinitely according to our characters. Suppose, for example, that a man has strong intellectual tastes, a love of art or science or literature. He will require, of course, enough wealth to enable him to devote himself without anxiety to