VALUES AND FINAL CAUSES 73 



* Bounding out of bed after an unbroken sleep, singing or 

 whistling as he dresses, coming down with beaming face 

 ready to laugh at the smallest provocation, the healthy 

 man of high powers, conscious of past successes, and by 

 his energy, quickness and resource, made confident of the 

 future, enters on his day s business not with repugnance, 

 but with gladness, and from hour to hour experiencing 

 satisfactions from work effectually done, comes home with 

 a surplus of energy remaining for hours of relaxation. 1 



Or Sir Leslie Stephen : 



* Nature wants big, strong, eupeptic, shrewd, sensible 

 human beings, and w r ould be grossly inconsistent if she 

 bestowed her highest reward of happiness upon a billious 

 (sic), scrofulous, knock-kneed saint, merely because he had 

 a strong objection to adultery, drunkenness, murder or 

 robbery, or an utter absence of malice, or even highly 

 cultivated sympathies. 2 



Consider how uncongenial such pictures would be to a 

 man imbued with the traditions of chivalry, or of the 

 mediaeval Church. 



Another obstacle to the practical efficiency of any ideal 

 which pretends to universality is the love which every man 

 bears to himself. 



There is no wise or good man that would change 

 persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world. 

 It may be he would have one man s wealth added to him 

 self, or the power of a second, or the learning of a third ; 

 but still he would receive those into his own person, because 

 he loves that best, and therefore esteems it best, and there 

 fore overvalues all that which he is, beyond all that which 

 any other man in the world can be. 3 



The ideal to which Riickert refers is in every case the 

 man s own self, with some features strengthened and others 

 reduced, or perhaps wholly omitted. One which all men 

 should follow must, of necessity, differ too widely from 

 each separate individual, and would find no imitators. Bos 

 bovi luppiter is a maxim of universal application. 



1 H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, p. 190. 



* Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 409. 



1 Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living , n. vi. 2. 



