We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Kingsley contrasts a modern tendency to treat material ease—“comfort and luxury”—as life’s main aim with a more inward, moral-psychological source of happiness: wholehearted commitment to a cause, idea, or vocation. The line reflects his broader Victorian concern that prosperity and respectability can dull spiritual energy and social responsibility. “Something to be enthusiastic about” suggests not mere entertainment but a sustaining purpose that engages the will and affections, giving life direction and meaning. The quote’s significance lies in its critique of consumerist definitions of well-being and its insistence that joy is more closely tied to ardor, conviction, and purposeful engagement than to possessions or physical ease.