“The means of mere existence,” he said, “are, in most of the states of the “Great Union,” within the reach of all, and no one need go hungry or naked. If he is able to work, the state will give him employment if no one else will, and if he is not able he will be cared for anyhow. But the style in which a man lives depends altogether on his ambition and ability. If his ability is equal to his ambition, he obtains what he wants and is happy and contented; unless, as often happens his ambition grows by what it feeds on and excites him to fresh exertions by a new allurement after every success. And so the wearing struggle may go on forever. People are mimics and none of them more so than the negroes. In imitating a stronger race they give out and gradually succumb. While they were slaves they were free from this competition, and rapidly increased. The African tribes were also free from it. But both have now been exposed to it for six generations and it has told on them heavily.”
“It would appear then that competition and selection go on under the present conditions of life almost as much as ever, for the law must apply to the weaker whites as well as to the negroes.”
“So it does, and always must, as long as men are competent to discriminate between the costly and the cheap, and continue to prefer the former, to the latter.”
“The reason for such preference,” I infer, “must be that more enjoyment of life is found in the possession of the more costly things. Is that your view?”
“It does not follow at all,” he replied. “Costly things give a fictitious enjoyment in anticipation while they are being pursued, but after they are obtained they give no more enjoyment than if they had been cheap. The possession of many things that have cost great worry and exertion frequently leads to nothing more than a perception of their vanity, and the uncovering of a new perspective of something bright and equally illusory beyond. From time immemorial your philosophers have sounded the praises of contentment. Contentment is nothing more nor less than happiness, and it is little to the purpose to ask a man to be happy unless the suggestion is backed up by the conditions of his environment. When people have absolutely nothing better to look forward to, they can almost always settle down to a comparative degree of contentment with what they have. But with an environment constantly showing chances of preferment, wealth, distinction, etc., and examples of the attainment of these things by others, contentment is constantly being unsettled and happiness always deferred to the future. A guest taking his dinner ‘out’ will reserve part of his appetite for the unseen, but commonly expected, desert of pudding and pie, but if he is informed that he “sees his dinner” before him, he will make himself quite satisfied without the desert.