Table-talk,――the best of talk. Even Kant thought it not beneath him to give rules for it: first, of the weather and the roads; next, the current events of the day; then history, art, and philosophy. So did Marsilius Ficinus: first, of divine things; then anecdotes; finally, of art and music. * * * * * The unthinking are prone to confine the meaning of Pleasure to Sensation. The coarsest philosophy of life is the most popular, because it is most easily understood, and because it appeals to the universal, which are the merely animal, traits of human nature. IV. _The Pleasures we may Derive from our Emotions._ The emotions are sensations translated into Memory and commented on by the Imagination, with the usual distortion and falsification of the original, characteristic of all translators and commentators. The primary emotions of Hope and Fear are the recollections of pleasure or pain projected into the future; the disappointment of hope or the realization of fear brings sorrow, regret, or remorse, feelings which are concerned with the past alone. These reflections suggest how much our happiness has to do with Time. If each could estimate for himself the relative value of the past, the present, and the future, the pursuit of happiness would be a science with results as certain as geometry. As it is, most men pass their days, not in enjoying life, but in getting ready to enjoy it, or in regretting they did not enjoy it; and those who think they are wiser, and who boast that they cultivate the present alone, usually sow it with the seed of thistles and tares to pester their later lives. The folly of philosophies――and, I may add, religions――has been their effort to divest man of these natural emotions. “Expect nothing, and you will not be disappointed,” is the cheerful advice of the pessimist and the Buddhist; “Fear nothing, for you are in the hands of God,” says the Christian fatalist. “Regrets are vain,” cries the opportunist; “live in the present, and let the dead past bury its dead.” In practical affairs, the best philosophy is common sense, which is nothing else than the abstract and epitome of the experience of all mankind through all time; and this arbiter condemns all three of the above maxims as the words of folly and not of wisdom. Hope, fear, and regret are equally necessary to the safe conduct of life with a view to securing the greatest enjoyment from it, and the only point left to consider is the relative extent in which each should be indulged. About this I shall offer a few suggestions.