Page:Chesterton - Twelve Types (Humphreys, 1902).djvu/76

Rh epicurean asceticism, which asserts that beer and skittles are alone satisfying. Wherever the manner of praising anything involves the statement that the speaker could live with that thing alone, there lies the germ and essence of asceticism. When William Morris, for example, says that love is enough, it is obvious that he asserts in those words that art, science, politics, ambition, money, houses, carriages, concerts, gloves, walking-sticks, door knockers, railway-stations, cathedrals and any other things one may choose to tabulate are unnecessary. When Omar Khayyam says:

'A book of verse beneath the bough

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou

Sitting beside me in the wilderness

O wilderness were Paradise enow.'