Chapter I: Front Matter

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?

BY

WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK

AUTHOR OF 'THE NEW REPUBLIC' ETC.

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'Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.'

'How dieth the wise man? As the fool.... That which befalleth the
sons of men befalleth the beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as
the one dieth so dieth the other, yea they have all one breath; so
that man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity.'

'[Greek: talaipôros egô anthrôpos, tis me rudetai ek tou sômatos
tou thanatou toutou];'

* * * * *

NEW YORK G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS 182 Fifth Avenue 1879

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK

TO

JOHN RUSKIN

_TO JOHN RUSKIN._

My dear Mr. Ruskin,--You have given me very great pleasure
by allowing me to inscribe this book to you, and for two reasons;
for I have two kinds of acknowledgment that I wish to make to
you--first, that of an intellectual debtor to a public teacher;
secondly, that of a private friend to the kindest of private
friends. The tribute I have to offer you is, it is true, a small
one; and it is possibly more blessed for me to give than it is for
you to receive it. In so far, at least, as I represent any
influence of yours, you may very possibly not think me a
satisfactory representative. But there is one fact--and I will lay
all the stress I can on it--which makes me less diffident than I
might be, in offering this book either to you or to the world
generally.

The import of the book is independent of the book itself, and of
the author of it; nor do the arguments it contains stand or fall
with my success in stating them; and these last at least I may
associate with your name. They are not mine. I have not discovered
or invented them. They are so obvious that any one who chooses may
see them; and I have been only moved to meddle with them, because,
from being so obvious, it seems that no one will so much as deign
to look at them, or at any rate to put them together with any care
or completeness. They might be before everybody's eyes; but instead
they are under everybody's feet. My occupation has been merely to
kneel in the mud, and to pick up the truths that are being trampled
into it, by a headstrong and uneducated generation.

With what success I have done this, it is not for me to judge. But
though I cannot be confident of the value of what I have done, I am
confident enough of the value of what I have tried to do. From a
literary point of view many faults may be found with me. There may
be faults yet deeper, to which possibly I shall have to plead
guilty. I may--I cannot tell--have unduly emphasized some points,
and not put enough emphasis on others. I may be convicted--nothing
is more likely--of many verbal inconsistencies. But let the
arguments I have done my best to embody be taken as a whole, and
they have a vitality that does not depend upon me; nor can they be
proved false, because my ignorance or weakness may here or there
have associated them with, or illustrated them by, a falsehood. I
am not myself conscious of any such falsehoods in my book; but if
such are pointed out to me, I shall do my best to correct them. If
what I have done prove not worth correction, others coming after me
will be preferred before me, and are sure before long to address
themselves successfully to the same task in which I perhaps have
failed. What indeed can we each of us look for but a large measure
of failure, especially when we are moving not with the tide but
against it--when the things we wrestle with are principalities and
powers, and spiritual stupidity in high places--and when we are
ourselves partly weakened by the very influences against which we
are struggling?

But this is not all. There is in the way another difficulty.
Writing as the well-wishers of truth and goodness, we find, as the
world now stands, that our chief foes are they of our own
household. The insolence, the ignorance, and the stupidity of the
age has embodied itself, and found its mouthpiece, in men who are
personally the negations of all that they represent theoretically.
We have men who in private are full of the most gracious modesty,
representing in their philosophies the most ludicrous arrogance; we
have men who practise every virtue themselves, proclaiming the
principles of every vice to others; we have men who have mastered
many kinds of knowledge, acting on the world only as embodiments of
the completest and most pernicious ignorance. I have had occasion
to deal continually with certain of these by name. With the
exception of one--who has died prematurely, whilst this book was in
the press--those I have named oftenest are still living. Many of
them probably are known to you personally, though none of them are
so known to me; and you will appreciate the sort of difficulty I
have felt, better than I can express it. I can only hope that as
the falsehood of their arguments cannot blind any of us to their
personal merits, so no intellectual demerits in my case will be
prejudicial to the truth of my arguments.

To me the strange thing is that such arguments should have to be
used all; and perhaps a thing stranger still that it should fall to
me to use them--to me, an outsider in philosophy, in literature,
and in theology. But the justification of my speaking is that there
is any opening for me to speak; and others must be blamed, not I,
if

the lyre so long divine
Degenerates into hands like mine.

At any rate, however all this may be, what I here inscribe to you,
my friend and teacher, I am confident is not unworthy of you. It is
not what I have done; it is what I have tried to do. As such I beg
you to accept it, and to believe me still, though now so seldom
near you,

Your admiring and affectionate friend,

W.H. MALLOCK.

P.S.--Much of the substance of the following book you have seen
already, in two Essays of mine that were published in the
'Contemporary Review,' and in five Essays that were published in
the 'Nineteenth Century.' It had at one time been my intention, by
the kindness of the respective Editors, to have reprinted these
Essays in their original form. But there was so much to add, to
omit, to rearrange, and to join together, that I have found it
necessary to rewrite nearly the whole; and thus you will find the
present volume virtually new.

Torquay, _May, 1879_.

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