To
look at a guide-book until the place it treats of has been
explored and left behind.
The practical person, to whom this may come as a new idea
and who wishes not to waste any time in experiments, would
doubtless like to hear how the plan works. He will say that
he certainly wants all the happiness to be got out of his
rambles, but it is clear that without the book in his pocket
he would miss many interesting things: Would the greater
degree of pleasure experienced in the others be a sufficient
compensation? I should say that he would gain more than he
would lose; that vivid interest and pleasure in a few things
is preferable to that fainter, more diffused feeling
experienced in the other case. Again, we have to take into
account the value to us of the mental pictures gathered in our
wanderings. For we know that only when a scene is viewed
emotionally, when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does
it become a permanent possession of the mind; in other words,
it registers an image which, when called up before the inner
eye, is capable of reproducing a measure of the original
delight.
In recalling those scenes which have given me the greatest
happiness, the images of which are most vivid and lasting, I
find that most of them are of scenes or objects which were
discovered, as it were, by chance, which I had not heard
of, or else had heard of and forgotten, or which I had not
expected to see. They came as a surprise, and in the following
instance one may see that it makes a vast difference whether
we do or do not experience such a sensation.
In the course of a ramble on foot in a remote district I came
to a small ancient town, set in a cuplike depression amidst
high wood-grown hills. The woods were of oak in spring
foliage, and against that vivid green I saw the many-gabled
tiled roofs and tall chimneys of the old timbered houses,
glowing red and warm brown in the brilliant sunshine - a scene
of rare beauty, and yet it produced no shock of pleasure;
never, in fact, had I looked on a lovely scene for the first
time so unemotionally. It seemed to be no new scene, but
an old familiar one; and that it had certain degrading
associations which took away all delight.
The reason of this was that a great railway company had
long been "booming" this romantic spot, and large photographs,
plain and coloured, of the town and its quaint buildings had
for years been staring at me in every station and every
railway carriage which I had entered on that line.
