Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/241

Rh and actions can justly be described as consciously or unconsciously making for happiness, are there not still a great many which are either quite automatic and purposeless, or else done under an exterior constraint over which we have no control,—which consciously or unconsciously, or both, we would rightly or wrongly fain not do,—which it makes us unhappy to do, and yet which the pressure brought to bear upon us from without compels us to do?'

Randal reflected a moment.

'Those automatic and purposeless actions,' he said, 'I won't give up to you, because, if they don't make for happiness now, they once did, or were intended to do, either in ourselves or in our ancestors.'

Wilson smiled.

'You are giving them up to me right off,' he said. 'Our ancestors! our ancestors make us do this or that! And what on earth have our ancestors to do with our hunt for happiness? No more than our friends and relations, and the community generally, which also makes us do that and this, whether it concerns us or not.'

'You are a devil,' growled Randal. 'You think things out. Thank God! I never did. If I had, I should have laundered all my poetry the way you have laundered most of your painting. Art should be simple and sensuous, as even the theologico-idealist