sensuous roll in the water! made with such sense of enjoyment—so slow, so lazy, eking it out—the whole of the animal seeming to smack its lips.
We "human mortals," I believe, quite underestimate the sensuous pleasures of animals. Their mere ways of moving must often be infinite joys to them, seeing that besides the motion itself—as with this seal, the gnu, or the springbok, the half-flying arboreal monkey, or the soaring bird—there is the ecstasy of perfect health and strength and the freedom of perfect nudity—absolute disencumbrance. The first of these may be felt almost, perhaps, in as great a degree by some savages, but if I may judge by my own experience it never is and never can be by a civilised man leading a civilised life. With us, speaking generally, health is more a negative than an affirmative proposition. To be well is not to be ill. But in the veldt, where one walks all day and eats one hearty meal by the camp-fire at the end of it, it is like a strong wine that one has drunk. It is a mighty, stirring, active, compelling force—ending, however, in fever, which the animals don't get. No doubt the pleasures of the intellect are of a higher order than those which spring from mere corporeal ecstasy; but is the civilised man, writing a treatise, happier than the savage in his war-dance, or the capercailzie going through his love antics? "That is the question"; or, in other words, does civilisation make for happiness?
Who, in spite of much laboured reasoning to the
