Défendez-vous au sage De se donner des soins pour le plaisir d'autrui? Cela même est un fruit qui je goûte aujourd'hui; J'en puis jouir demain, et quelques jours encore.
And all I would add is that, although it was very nice of the old man to enjoy his planting because of the unborn generations who would eat the fruits, he might have been less nice and quite as pleased if, as is probable, he liked gardening for its own sake.
But people seem--on account of that horrid philosophical and moralising twist--to cast about for an excuse whenever they are doing what is, after all, neither wicked nor silly--to wit, making the best of such days and such powers as a merciful Providence or an indifferent trio of Fates has allowed them. But I should like to turn the tables on these persons, and suggest that all this worrying about whether life is or is not worth living, and hunting for answers for and against, may itself be an excuse, unconscious like all the most mischievous excuses, and hide not finer demands and highbred discontents, but rather a certain feebleness, lack of grip and adaptation, and an indolent acquiescence in what my godchild stoutly refused, a greater or lesser going to bits.
This much is certain, that we all of us have to make a stand against such demoralisation whenever our plans are upset, or we are impatient to do something else, or we are feeling worried and ill. We most of us have to struggle against leaving our portmanteau gaping on a sofa or throwing our boot-trees into corners when we are in a place only for a few hours; and struggle against allowing the flowers on the table to wither, and the fire to go out, when we are setting out on a journey next day, or a dear one is about to say goodbye. "See to that fire being kept up, and bring fresh roses," said a certain friend of mine on a similar occasion. That was laying out a little hanging garden on the narrow ledge of two or three poor hours; and, behold! the garden has continued to be sweet and bright in the wide safe places of memory.
In saying all these things, I am aware that many wise men, or men reputed wise, are against me; and that pretty hard words have been applied in the literature of all countries and ages to persons who are of my way of thinking, as, for instance, _gross, thoughtless, without soul_, and _Epicurean Swine_. And some of the people I like most to read about, the heroes of Tolstoi, André, Levine, Pierre, and, of course, Tolstoi himself, are for ever repeating that they can not live, let alone enjoy life, unless some one tell them why they should live at all.
