Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

CHILD'S PLAY
general sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt,
general sense of wellbeing in bed. And here, of
course, you will understand pleasurable sensations ;
for overmastering pain — the most deadly and tragical
element in life, and the true commander of man's
soul and body — alas ! pain has its own way with all
of us ; it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon the fairy
garden where the child wanders in a dream, no less
surely than it rules upon the field of battle, or sends
the immortal war-god whimpering to his father ; and
innocence, no more than philosophy, can protect us
from this sting. As for taste, when we bear in mind
the excesses of unmitigated sugar which delight a
youthful palate, ' it is surely no very cynical asperity '
to think taste a character of the maturer growth.
Smell and hearing are perhaps more developed ; I
remember many scents, many voices, and a great
deal of spring singing in the woods. But hearing is
capable of vast improvement as a means of pleasure ;
and there is all the world between gaping wonder-
ment at the jargon of birds, and the emotion with
which a man listens to articulate music.
At the same time, and step by step with this
increase in the definition and intensity of what we
feel which accompanies our growing age, another
change takes place in the sphere of intellect, by
which all things are transformed and seen through
theories and associations as through coloured win-
dows. We make to ourselves day by day, out of
history, and gossip, and economical speculations, and
God knows what, a medium in which we walk and
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