Had this been an English peasant the conclusion would be tenable.
But Mackay had most of the elements of a liberal education. He had
skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. He had a thoughtful
hold of what he knew, which would be exceptional among bankers. He
had been brought up in the midst of hot-house piety, and told, with
incongruous pride, the story of his own brother's deathbed ecstasies.
Yet he had somehow failed to fulfil himself, and was adrift like a
dead thing among external circumstances, without hope or lively
preference or shaping aim. And further, there seemed a tendency
among many of his fellows to fall into the same blank and unlovely
opinions. One thing, indeed, is not to be learned in Scotland, and
that is the way to be happy. Yet that is the whole of culture, and
perhaps two-thirds of morality. Can it be that the Puritan school,
by divorcing a man from nature, by thinning out his instincts, and
setting a stamp of its disapproval on whole fields of human activity
and interest, leads at last directly to material greed?
Nature is a good guide through life, and the love of simple pleasures
next, if not superior, to virtue; and we had on board an Irishman who
based his claim to the widest and most affectionate popularity
precisely upon these two qualities, that he was natural and happy.
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