it is not well that the majority should leave the
mean and beaten path.
    For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure - tangible material
prosperity in this world - is the safest test of virture. Progress has ever been
through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the
most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. To use a
commercial metaphor, competition is so keen, and the margin of profit has been
cut down so closely that virtue cannot afford to throw any bonâ fide chance
away, and must base her action rather on the actual moneying out of conduct than
on a flattering prospectus. She will not therefore neglect - as some do who are
prudent and economical enough in other matters - the important factor of our
chance of escaping detection, or at any rate of our dying first. A reasonable
virtue will give this chance its due value, neither more nor less.
    Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty. For hard as
it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often harder to
distinguish still, and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as
sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure will lead us. When men
burn their fingers through following after pleasure they find out their mistake
and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt
them through following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning right
virtue. The devil in fact when he dresses himself in angel's clothes can only be
detected by experts of exceptional skill, and so often does he adopt this
disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at all, and
prudent people will follow after pleasure as a more homely, but more
respectable, and on the whole much more trustworthy guide.
    Returning to Mr. Pontifex, over and above his having lived long and
prosperously he left numerous offspring, to all of whom he communicated not only
his physical and mental characteristics with no more than the usual amount of
modification, but also no small share of characteristics which are less easily
transmitted - I mean his pecuniary characteristics. It may be said he acquired
these by sitting still and letting money run as it were right up against him,
but against how many does not money run who do not take it when it does, or who
even if they hold it for a little while cannot so incorporate it with themselves
that it shall descend through them to their offspring? Mr. Pontifex did this. He
kept what he may be said to have made