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 profits has been cut down so closely that virtue cannot
afford to throw any _bona 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
still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us
into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure.
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.
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