But does the plain man put it? I mean--does he put it seriously and effectively? I think that very often, if not as a general rule, he does not. He may--in fact he does--gloomily and savagely mutter: "What pleasure do I get out of life?" But he fails to insist on a clear answer from himself, and even if he obtains a clear answer--even if he makes the candid admission, "No pleasure," or "Not enough pleasure"--even then he usually does not insist on modifying his life in accordance with the answer. He goes on ignoring all the interesting towns and oases on the way to his Timbuctoo. Excessively uncertain about future joy, and too breathlessly preoccupied to think about joy in the present, he just drives obstinately ahead, rather like a person in a trance. Singular conduct for a plain man priding himself on common sense! For the case of the plain man, conscientious and able, can only too frequently be summed up thus: Faced with the problem of existence, which is the problem of combining the largest possible amount of present satisfaction with the largest possible amount of security in the future, he has educated himself generally, and he has educated himself specially for a particular profession or trade; he has adopted the profession or trade, with all its risks and responsibilities--risks and responsibilities which often involve the felicity of others; he has bound himself to it for life, almost irrevocably; he labours for it so many hours a day, and it occupies his thoughts for so many hours more. Further, in the quest of satisfaction, he has taken a woman to wife and has had children. And here it is well to note frankly that his prime object in marrying was not the woman's happiness, but his own, and that the children came, not in order that they might be jolly little creatures, but as extensions of the father's individuality. The home, the environment gradually constructed for these secondary beings, constitutes another complex organization, which he superimposes on the complex organization of his profession or trade, and his brain has to carry and vitalize the two of them. All his energies are absorbed, and they are absorbed so utterly that once a year he is obliged to take a holiday lest he should break down, and even the organization of the holiday is complex and exhausting.