,xi THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS 239 



it recommends are also the true interest of each individual! 

 The particular advantage of the foregoing system seems to 

 be, that it furnishes proper mediums for that purpose." 

 (IV. p. 360.) 



In this paean to virtue, there is more of the 

 dance measure than will sound appropriate in the 

 ears of most of the pilgrims who toil painfully, 

 not without many a stumble and many a bruise, 

 along the rough and steep roads which lead to the 

 higher life. 



Virtue is undoubtedly beneficent; but the man 

 is to be envied to whom her ways seem in anywise 

 playful. And though she may not talk much 

 about suffering and self-denial, her silence on that 

 topic may be accounted for on the principle ga va 

 sans dire. The calculation of the greatest happi- 

 ness is not performed quite so easily as a rule of 

 three sum; while, in the hour of temptation, the 

 question will crop up, whether, as something has 

 to be sacrificed, a bird in the hand is not worth 

 two in the bush; whether it may not be as well to 

 give up the problematical greater happiness in the 

 future, for a certain great happiness in the present, 



" Buy the merry madness of one hour 

 With the long irksomeness of following time." * 



If mankind cannot be engaged in practices 

 " full of austerity and rigour/' by the love of righte- 

 ousness and the fear of evil, without seeking for 

 other compensation than that which flows from 

 the gratification of such love and the consciousness 

 * Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, act i. 



