Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/178

158 Examining life from that standpoint I know of nothing that gives me more delight than the decoration and embellishment with which man has overlaid all the mere uses of existence—things which without those embellishments might not delight us at all—or only as a dry crust of bread delights in his necessity the starving beggar, or ditch-water one dying of thirst.

I can scarcely think of a use in life which I enjoy, that I do not enjoy more because of the embellishment placed about it by man, who claims to have been made "in God's image." Nothing that my senses respond to with delight stays limited within the utilitarian aspect on which its moral claims to acceptance are too frequently based—or remains a benefit merely material in its scope.

When we breathe happily, when we eat happily, and when we love happily, we do not think of the utilitarian ends with which those bodily instincts are related. The utilitarian motive connects, but only subconsciously, with that sense of well-being and delight which then fills us; and the conscious life within us is happy without stooping to reason.

Underlying our receptivity of these things is, no doubt, the fact that our bodies have a use for them. But were we to consider the material uses alone, our enjoyment would be less; and if (by following that process) we absorbed them in a less joyous spirit, our