She springs from man's
experience concerning his own well-being - and this, though not infallible, is
still the least fallible thing we have. A system which cannot stand without a
better foundation than this must have something so unstable within itself that
it will topple over on whatever pedestal we place it.
    The world has long ago settled that morality and virtue are what bring men
peace at the last. »Be virtuous,« says the copy book, »and you will be happy.«
Surely if a reputed virtue fails often in this respect it is only an insidious
form of vice, and if a reputed vice brings no very serious mischief on a man's
later years it is not so bad a vice as it is said to be. Unfortunately though we
are all of a mind about the main opinion that virtue is what tends to happiness,
and vice what ends in sorrow, we are not so unanimous about details - that is to
say as to whether any given course, such, we will say as smoking, has a tendency
to happiness or the reverse.
    I submit it as the result of my own poor observation, that a good deal of
unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards children is not
generally followed by ill consequences to the parents themselves. They may cast
a gloom over their children's lives for many years without having to suffer
anything that will hurt them. I should say, then, that it shows no great moral
obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make their
children's lives a burden to them.
    Granted that Mr. Pontifex's was not a very exalted character, ordinary men
are not required to have very exalted characters. It is enough if we are of the
same moral and mental stature as the main, or mean, part of men - that is to say
as the average.
    It is involved in the very essence of things that rich men who die old shall
have been mean. The greatest and wisest of mankind will be almost always found
to be the meanest - the ones who have kept the mean best between excess either
of virtue or vice. They can hardly ever have been prosperous if they have not
done this, and, considering how many miscarry altogether, it is no small feather
in a man's cap if he has been no worse than his neighbours. Homer tells us about
some one who made it his business aien aristeyein kai ypeiroxon emmenai allon
(»always to excel and to stand higher than other people«). What an
uncompanionable disagreeable person he must have surely