But there are degrees.A man may desire to go to Mecca.His conscience tells him that he ought to go to Mecca.He fares forth,either by the aid of Cook's,or unassisted;he may probably never reach Mecca;he may drown before he gets to Port Said;he may perish ingloriously on the coast of the Red Sea;his desire may remain eternally frustrate.Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him.But he will not be tormented in the same way as the man who,desiring to reach Mecca,and harried by the desire to reach Mecca,never leaves Brixton.
It is something to have left Brixton.Most of us have not left Brixton.We have not even taken a cab to Ludgate Circus and inquired from Cook's the price of a conducted tour.And our excuse to ourselves is that there are only twenty-four hours in the day.
If we further analyse our vague,uneasy aspiration,we shall,I think,see that it springs from a fixed idea that we ought to do something in addition to those things which we are loyally and morally obliged to do.We are obliged,by various codes written and unwritten,to maintain ourselves and our families (if any)in health and comfort,to pay our debts,to save,to increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency.A task sufficiently difficult!A task which very few of us achieve!A task often beyond our skill!yet,if we succeed in it,as we sometimes do,we are not satisfied;the skeleton is still with us.
And even when we realise tat the task is beyond our skill,that our powers cannot cope with it,we feel that we should be less discontented if we gave to our powers,already overtaxed,something still further to do.