150 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



science walks through the garden of his si3irit in the cool of the 

 evening. I must not linger too long over this idea. But it is a 

 transforming idea. It allows no act of life to be commonplace. It 

 makes every act of life a moral act, and if it be touched with emo- 

 tion it makes every act of life a religious act. It is a thought to 

 awaken enthusiasm, for it seems to me in a very real sense to trans- 

 figure life. 



All conduct, all action, is, then, either good or bad; not good or 

 bad abstractly and absolutely, but good or bad with respect to some 

 tangible end. But this relativity must always be kept in mind. A 

 coat is good in winter if it keeps us warm; it is good in summer if it 

 keeps us cool. A shot is a good one if it goes straight to the mark. A 

 machine is a good one if it does the required work. The criterion 

 of the thing seems to lie in this, whether it is well or ill adapted to the 

 end in view. It is precisely the same with conduct. Evolved con- 

 duct is marked by a nice adjustment of means to ends. 



ISTow, a thoroughgoing analysis of every scheme of life shows 

 that happiness, whether it be called such with all frankness and 

 sincerity, or whether it be called blessedness, or virtue, or perfection, 

 is in reality the final end. The immediate end must be the means 

 to happiness, and morality, the art of right living, must consist in the 

 realization of these means in the fullest possible measure. But bear 

 in mind that happiness is not self -existent, a bright light shining in 

 the darkness of the unfelt. It is a state of individual consciousness, 

 which results from the gratification of individual desires. You re- 

 member what Omar Khayyam says: 



" I sent my Soul through, the Invisible, 

 Some letter of that After-life to spell ; 

 And by and by my Soul returned to me, 

 And answei-ed, 'I mj'self am Heaven and Hell.' 

 Heaven but the Vision of fulfilled desire, 

 And Hell the shadow of a Soul on fire." 



The moral life consists in realizing the utmost attainable measure 

 of happiness, and this, not alone for one's self, but quite as ardently 

 for one's children and one's fellows. It is not a selfish scheme of 

 life, not happiness for one's self and misery for others, but happiness 

 as a universal end. It means fullness of living, the entertaining of 

 manifold desires and interests, and their most complete and rational 

 gratification. It is a divine abandon, rather than a narrow asceti- 

 cism; extravagance, rather than parsimony. Plato, you may re- 

 member, speaks of the world as the product of the divine un- 

 grudgingness. What an unparalleled description, and how pleasant 

 to repeat to one's self in the midst of a commercial age! The 

 human life which most nearly approaches the divine is steeped in 



