16.
Two Kinds of Pleasures.
There are two principal kinds of pleasures that man seeks; one is material pleasures, and about ninety-nine per cent of the human family devote themselves to these. The remainder—the one per cent—seek mental pleasures, and this little group is the one that gets the real, lasting, satisfying and improving pleasures out of life.
The material pleasures are the social pleasures of eating, displaying, possessing, and so forth. Material pleasures generate in the human the desire for fluff, feathers, and four-flushing.
Material pleasures accentuate the desire to possess things, and in the strife for possession, hearts are broken, fortunes wasted, nerves shattered, and the finer sentiments calloused.
The homes where material pleasures abound are the ones where worry, neurasthenia and nervous prostration abound.
Material pleasures are merely stimulants for the time being, and there always come the intermittent reflexes of gloom and depression.
The desire to show off, to excite envy in others, is always present at the homes where material pleasures are the rule.
Material pleasures call for crowds. Mental pleasures are best enjoyed in solitude.
The material pleasure-seeker lives a life of convention, engagements, routine, strain, and high tension.