CHAP. XIV.] ASPECTS OF PAIN. 447 



yet there has never been a state of society in which it has 

 not been reckoned more honourable 



To scorn delights and live laborious days, 



than to run after pleasure and to shrink from pain. 



And this brings me to the main point for our considera- 

 tion. Why is it that in all times and countries the endur- 

 ance of pain has been looked upon with great respect, and 

 has been considered necessary, salutary, honourable, or meri- 

 torious ? There is no difficulty, of course, about those cases 

 in which a person undertakes some enterprise, good in itself, 

 and in pursuance of this enterprise meets with various forms 

 of suffering. These are only instances of the general maxim 

 to despise evils of a lower order when they stand in the 

 way of some good of a higher order. 



The ability to endure suffering while engaged in a good 

 work being recognised as a species of excellence, it is only 

 natural that this kind of ability should become the subject 

 of special cultivation. The aspirant to this form of virtue, 

 therefore, voluntarily submits himself to suffering, not for 

 the sake of any visible benefit to himself and others to be 

 obtained by enduring that particular pain, but for the sake 

 of discipline. 



The aim of discipline is that he himself, and still more 

 that others, may have confidence that he is able to endure 

 suffering in a good cause, because he has already endured 

 suffering merely to justify this confidence. 



Practices of this kind have in some countries been developed 

 to an extravagant degree, and may have given rise to various 

 abnormal sentiments and maxims ; but in the principle of 

 educational discipline there is nothing but the soundest 

 wisdom, for the only way in which an individual can 

 acquire confidence that he can perform a given act when he 

 wishes to do so is by previous practice ; and when it is 

 necessary for the public good that there should be a body of 

 men, of each of whom we can be sure that he will act in a par- 

 ticular manner when the occasion for it arrives, it is absolutely 

 necessary that they should be drilled to an exercise as like as 



