VALUATIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN 125 



in all conduct to which we attach a high moral value. That 

 this should be so is explained by the fact that the main 

 function of duty is to hold in check the animal instincts, 

 that is to say, those to whose satisfaction the most vivid 

 pleasure is attached. 



Again, no education can be effective for good unless it 

 contains a large element of pain. Suffering is learning, 

 and is as essential to the preparation for great actions as 

 it is to their execution. A child who is spared is spoiled. 

 In mature life the character is strengthened and purified 

 by pain and by pity, or sympathy with the pain of others. 

 No real greatness can be attained, either in morality or in 

 other forms of excellence, except as the fruit of a strict 

 discipline. If pain were indeed an evil, a man s own con 

 science, and that of his friends, would not deny him, in his 

 last days, release from irremediable sufferings, but would 

 enjoin it as a duty both to himself and to society; and at 

 any time in his life a painful disease would make him the 

 object, not of pity, but of moral disapprobation. In 

 no case does the voluntary submission to evil command 

 admiration, and the greater the evil, the less chance is there 

 of its being admired ; the voluntary submission to pain 

 in its lower intensities gains for a man the praise of being 

 patient, in its higher, the glory of martyrdom. The great 

 ness of nations is cradled in hardship, and decays through 

 prosperity. 



It is clearly unreasonable to identify with evil a feeling 

 which is an essential element not only in all deeds which 

 command our moral approval, but also to the production 

 of that kind of character which enables men to perform 

 them. 



If the universe is to be regarded as a system of purposes 

 converging on a single, though unknown, final end, and 

 moving toward that end by a constant process of the evolu 

 tion of opposites, it is reasonable to ask, What are the 

 functions of factors in that process which hold so prominent 

 a place in our regards as pain and pleasure do ? To this 

 inquiry our ignorance of what the final end may be is no 



