The Contented Man

The word content is not inspiring nowadays; rather it is irritating
because it is dull. It prepares the mind for a little sermon in the style
of the Vicar of Wakefield about how you and I should be satisfied with our
countrified innocence and our simple village sports. The word, however,
has two meanings, somewhat singularly connected; the "sweet content" of
the poet and the "cubic content" of the mathematician. Some distinguish
these by stressing the different syllables. Thus, it might happen to any
of us, at some social juncture, to remark gaily, "Of the content of the
King of the Cannibal Islands' Stewpot I am content to be ignorant"; or
"Not content with measuring the cubic content of my safe, you are stealing
the spoons." And there really is an analogy between the mathematical and
the moral use of the term, for lack of the observation of which the latter
has been much weakened and misused.

The preaching of contentment is in disrepute, well deserved in so far that
the moral is really quite inapplicable to the anarchy and insane peril of
our tall and toppling cities. Content suggests some kind of security; and
it is not strange that our workers should often think about rising above
their position, since they have so continually to think about sinking
below it. The philanthropist who urges the poor to saving and simple
pleasures deserves all the derision that he gets. To advise people to be
content with what they have got may or may not be sound moral philosophy.

But to urge people to be content with what they haven't got is a piece of
impudence hard for even the English poor to pardon. But though the creed
of content is unsuited to certain special riddles and wrongs, it remains
true for the normal of mortal life. We speak of divine discontent;
discontent may sometimes be a divine thing, but content must always be the
human thing. It may be true that a particular man, in his relation to
his master or his neighbour, to his country or his enemies, will do well
to be fiercely unsatisfied or thirsting for an angry justice. But it is
not true, no sane person can call it true, that man as a whole in his
general attitude towards the world, in his posture towards death or green
fields, towards the weather or the baby, will be wise to cultivate
dissatisfaction. In a broad estimate of our earthly experience, the great
truism on the tablet remains: he must not covet his neighbour's ox nor his
ass nor anything that is his. In highly complex and scientific
civilisations he may sometimes find himself forced into an exceptional
vigilance. But, then, in highly complex and scientific civilisations,
nine times out of ten, he only wants his own ass back.

But I wish to urge the case