The Plain Man and His Wife | Page 6

gets the same satisfaction at less
expense. I admit also that it ought theoretically to yield the conscious
satisfaction which accompanies any sustained effort of the faculties. I

deny that in fact it does yield this satisfaction, for the reason that the
man is too busy ever to examine the treasures of his soul. And what
else does it yield? For what other immediate end is the colossal travail
being accomplished?
Well, it may, and does, occur that the plain man is practising physical
and intellectual calisthenics, and running a vast business and sending
ships and men to the horizons of the earth, and keeping a home in a
park, and oscillating like a rapid shuttle daily between office and home,
and lying awake at nights, and losing his eyesight and his digestion,
and staking his health, and risking misery for the beings whom he
cherishes, and enriching insurance companies, and providing joy-rides
for nice young women whom he has never seen--and all his present
profit therefrom is a game of golf with a free mind once a fortnight, or
half an hour's intimacy with his wife and a free mind once a week or so,
or a ten minutes' duel with that daughter of his and a free mind on an
occasional evening! Nay, it may occur that after forty years of incessant
labour, in answer to an inquiry as to where the genuine conscious fun
comes in, he has the right only to answer: "Well, when I have time, I
take the dog out for a walk. I enjoy larking with the dog."
The estimable plain man, with his horror of self-examination, is apt to
forget the immediate end of existence in the means. And so much so,
that when the first distant end--that of a secure old age--approaches
achievement, he is incapable of admitting it to be achieved, and goes on
worrying and worrying about the means--from simple habit! And when
he does admit the achievement of the desired end, and abandons the
means, he has so badly prepared himself to relish the desired end that
the mere change kills him! His epitaph ought to read: "Here lies the
plain man of common sense, whose life was all means and no end."
A remedy will be worth finding.

II - THE TASTE FOR PLEASURE

I
One evening--it is bound to happen in the evening when it does
happen--the plain man whose case I endeavoured to analyse in the
previous chapter will suddenly explode. The smouldering volcano
within that placid and wise exterior will burst forth, and the
surrounding country will be covered with the hot lava of his immense
hidden grievance. The business day has perhaps been marked by an
unusual succession of annoyances, exasperations, disappointments--but
he has met them with fine philosophic calm; fatigue has overtaken
him--but it has not overcome him; throughout the long ordeal at the
office he has remained master of himself, a wondrous example to the
young and the foolish. And then some entirely unimportant
occurrence--say, an invitation to a golf foursome which his duties
forbid him to accept--a trifle, a nothing, comes along and brings about
the explosion, in a fashion excessively disconcerting to the onlooker,
and he exclaims, acidly, savagely, with a profound pessimism:
"What pleasure do I get out of life?" And in that single abrupt question
(to which there is only one answer) he lays bare the central flaw of his
existence.
The onlooker will probably be his wife, and the tone employed will
probably imply that she is somehow mysteriously to blame for the fact
that his earthly days are not one unbroken series of joyous diversions.
He has no pose to keep up with his wife. And, moreover, if he really
loves her he will find a certain curious satisfaction in hurting her now
and then, in being wilfully unjust to her, as he would never hurt or be
unjust to a mere friend. (Herein is one of the mysterious differences
between love and affection!) She is alarmed and secretly aghast, as well
she may be. He also is secretly aghast. For he has confessed a fact
which is an inconvenient fact; and Anglo-Saxons have such a horror of
inconvenient facts that they prefer to ignore them even to themselves.
To pretend that things are not what they are is regarded by
Anglo-Saxons as a proof of strength of mind and wholesomeness of
disposition; while to admit that things are indeed what they are is
deemed to be either weakness or cynicism. The plain man is incapable

of being a cynic; he feels, therefore, that he has been guilty of weakness,
and this, of course, makes him very cross.
"Can't something be done?" says his wife, meaning, "Can't something
be done to ameliorate your hard lot?"
(Misguided creature!