lucifer, for some time a bishop in southern italy (you did not know that, but it is true nevertheless, and you will find his name in the writings of duchesne, and he took part in councils; nay, there was a time when i knew the very see of which he was bishop, but the passage of years effaces all these things)—lucifer, i say, laid it down in his system of morals that contentment was a virtue, and said that it could be aimed at and acquired positively, just as any other virtue can. then there are others who have said that it was but a frame of mind and the result of several virtues; but these are the thinkers. the great mass of people are willing to say that contentment is strictly in proportion to the amount of money one may have, and they are wrong. i remember now there was a sultan, or some such dignitary, in spain, who counted the days of his life which had been filled with content, and found that they were seventeen. he was lucky; there are not many of us who can say the same. then once a man told me this story about contentment, which seemed to me full of a profound meaning. it seems there was once an old gentleman who was possessed of something over half a[254] million pounds, a banker, and this old gentleman every night of his life would go through certain little private books of his, compare them with the current list of prices, and estimate to a penny what he was worth before he slept. it was always a great pleasure to him to note the figures growing larger, and a great pain to him to note the rare occasions when they had shrunk a little in twenty-four hours. it so happened that this old gentleman lost a considerable sum of money which he had imprudently lent to a distant and foreign country too much praised in the newspapers, and he worried so much over the loss that he became ill and could not go to his office. his sons kept on the business for him, and every succeeding week they lost more and more of the money. but such was their filial piety that every night they gave the old gentleman false information, and that in some detail, so that he could put down his little rows of figures and see them growing larger night after night. you see, it was not the wealth that he desired, it was the increase in the little rows of figures; the wealth he consumed was the same; he wore the same clothes, he ate the same food, he lived in the same house as before, and he had for a companion eternally one or another of the two nurses provided by the doctor. the figures increasing regularly as they did filled him with a greater and a greater joy. after two years of this business he came to die, but his passing was a very happy one: he blessed his sons fervently and told them that[255] nothing had more comforted his old age than their sober business sense; they had nearly doubled the family fortune during their short administration of it; he congratulated them and was now ready to go to his god in peace. which he did, and two weeks after the petition in bankruptcy was presented by the young people themselves, always the more decent way of doing it: but the old man had died content.
which parable leads up to the point at which i should have begun all this, which is, that once in my life, in the year 1901, during a heavy fog in the early morning of the month of november, in london, i met a perfectly contented man. he was the conductor of an omnibus. these vehicles depended in those days entirely on the traction of horses. they were therefore slow, and as the night, or rather the early morning, was foggy (it was a little after one) people going westward—journalists for instance, who are compelled to be up at such hours—did not choose to travel in this way. there was no one in the ’bus but myself. i sat next the door as it rumbled along; there was one of those little faint oil lamps above it which are unique in christendom for the small amount of light they give. it was impossible to read, but by the slight glimmer of it i saw suddenly revealed like a vision the face of that really happy man. it was a round face, framed in a somewhat slovenly hat and coat collar, but not slovenly in feature,[256] though not severe. and as its owner clung to the rail and swung with the movements of the ’bus he whistled softly to himself a genial little air. it was not i but he that began the conversation. he told me that few things were a greater blessing in life than gas fires, especially if one could regulate the amount of gas by a penny in the slot. he pointed out to me that in this way there were never any disputes as to the amount of gas used, and he also said that it kept a man from the curse of credit, which was the ruin of so many. i told him that in my house there was no gas, but that his description almost made me wish there was. and so it did, for he went on to tell me how you could cook any mortal thing with any degree of heat and at any speed by the simple regulation of a tap.
it may be imagined how anxious i was on meeting so rare a being to go more deeply into the matter and to find out on what such happiness reposed; but i did not know where to begin, because there are always some questions which men do not like asked, and unless one knows all about a man’s life one does not know what those questions are. luckily for me, he volunteered. he told me that he was married and had eight children. he told me his wages, which were astonishingly low, his hours of labour, which were incredibly long, and he further told me that on reaching the yard that night he would have to walk a mile to his home. he said he liked this, because it made him sleep,[257] and he added that in his profession the great difficulty was to get enough exercise. he told me how often a day off was allowed him and how greatly he enjoyed it. he told me the rent which he paid for his two rooms, which appeared to be one-third of his income, and congratulated himself upon the cheapness and commodity of the place; and so he went on talking as we rumbled down the king’s road, going farther and farther and farther west. my day would end in a few hundred yards; his not for a mile or two more. yet his content was far the greater, and it affected me, i am sorry to say, with wonder rather than with a similar emotion of repose and pleasure.
the next part of his conversation discovered what you will often find in the conversation of contented men (or, rather, of partially contented men, for no other absolutely contented man have i ever met except this one), that is, a certain good-humoured contempt for those who grumble. he told me that the drivers of ’buses were never happy; they had all that life can give: high wages, fresh open-air work, the dignity of controlling horses, and, what is perhaps more important, ceaseless companionship, for not only had they the companionship of chance people who would come and sit on the front seats of the ’bus outside, but they could and did make appointments with friends who would come and ride some part of the way and talk to them. then, again, as their work was more skilled, their tenure[258] of it was more secure, nor were they constrained to shout “liverpool street” at the top of their voices for hours on end, nor to say “benk, benk, benk” in imitation of the pom-pom. nevertheless they grumbled. he was careful to tell me that they were not really unhappy. what he condemned in them was rather the habit and, as it were, the fashion of grumbling. it seemed as though no weather pleased them; it was always either too hot or too cold; they took no pleasure in the healthy english rain beating upon their faces, and warm spring days seemed to put them in a worse humour than ever. he condemned all this in drivers.
when we had come to the corner of my street in chelsea as i got out i offered him a cigar which i had upon me. he told me he did not smoke. he was going on to tell me that he did not drink, and would, i had no doubt, if he had had further leisure, have told me his religion, his politics, and much more about himself; but though the ’buses in those days would wait very long at street corners they would not wait for ever, and that particular ’bus rumbled and bumped away. i looked after it a little wistfully, for fear that i might never see a happy man again. and i walked down my street towards my home more slowly than usual, thinking upon the thing that i had just experienced.
i confess i found it a very difficult matter. that experience not only challenged all that i had heard[259] of happiness, but also re-awoke the insistent and imperative question which men put to their gods and which never receives an answer. ecstasy is independent of all material conditions whatsoever. that great sense of rectitude which so often embitters men but permits them to support pain is independent of material conditions also. but these are not contented moods: oblivion is ready to every man’s hand, and even the most unfortunate secure a little sleep, and even the most tortured slaves know that at last, for all the rules and fines and regulations of the workshop, they cannot be forbidden to die; but such a prospect is not equivalent to content. further, there is a philosophy, rarely achieved but conspicuous in every rank of fortune, which so steadily regards all external accident as to remain indifferent to the strain of living and even to be, to some extent, master of physical pain. but that philosophy, that mournful philosophy which i have heard called “the permanent religion of mankind,” is not content: on the contrary, it is very close indeed to despair. it is the philosophy of which the roman empire perished. it is the philosophy which, just because it utterly failed to satisfy the heart of man, powerfully accelerated the triumph of the church, as the weight and pressure of water powerfully accelerate the rise of a man’s body through it, to the sunlight and the air above, which are native and necessary to him. no, it was not the philosophy of the stoics[260] which had laid a foundation for the ’bus-conductor’s soul.
i could not explain that content of his in any way save upon the hypothesis that he was mad.
