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

THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW
also, even those whom the inspector loves, it may
not be altogether well. It is concluded that in such
a state of society, supposing it to be financially
sound, the level of comfort will be high. It does
not follow : there are strange depths of idleness in
man, a too-easily-got sufficiency, as in the case of
the sago-eaters, often quenching the desire for all
besides ; and it is possible that the men of the richest
ant-heaps may sink even into squalor. But suppose
they do not; suppose our tricksy instrument of
human nature, when we play upon it this new
tune, should respond kindly ; suppose no one to be
damped and none exasperated by the new conditions,
the whole enterprise to be financially sound — a
vaulting supposition — and all the inhabitants to
dwell together in a golden mean of comfort : we
have yet to ask ourselves if this be what man desire,
or if it be what man will even deign to accept for
a continuance. It is certain that man loves to eat,
it is not certain that he loves that only or that best.
He is supposed to love comfort ; it is not a love, at
least, that he is faithful to. He is supposed to love
happiness ; it is my contention that he rather loves
excitement. Danger, enterprise, hope, the novel,
the aleatory, are dearer to man than regular meals.
He^^does not think so when he is hungry, but he
thinks so again as soon as he is fed ; and on the
hypothesis of a successful ant-heap, he would never
go hungry. It would be always after dinner in that
society, as, in the land of the Lotos-eaters, it was
always afternoon ; and food, which, when we have it
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