, which therefore a good man
will seek by all lawful means. Aristotle laid an intense stress on the
cultivation of the domestic virtues, justly representing the household as
the type, no less than the nursery, of the state, and the political
well-being of the state as contingent on the style of character cherished
and manifested in the home-life of its members.

There is reason to believe that *Aristotle's personal character* was
conformed to his theory of virtue,--that he pursued the middle path, rather
than the more arduous route of moral perfection. Though much of his time
was spent in Athens, he was a native of Macedonia, and was for several
years resident at the court of Philip as tutor to Alexander, with whom he
retained friendly relations for the greater part of his royal pupil's
life. Of his connection with the Macedonian court and public affairs,
there are several stories that implicate him dishonorably with political
intrigues, and though there is not one of these that is not denied, and
not one which rests on competent historical authority, such traditions are
not apt so to cluster as to blur the fair fame of a sturdily incorruptible
man, but are much more likely to cling to the memory of a trimmer and a
time-server.

*Epicurus,* from whom the Epicurean philosophy derives its name, was for
many years a teacher of philosophy in Athens. He was a man of simple,
pure, chaste, and temperate habits, in his old age bore severe and
protracted sufferings, from complicated and incurable disease, with
singular equanimity, and had his memory posthumously blackened only by
those who--like theological bigots of more recent times--inferred, in
despite of all contemporary evidence, that he was depraved in character,
because they thought that his philosophy ought to have made him so.

He represented *pleasure as the supreme good*, and its pleasure-yielding
capacity as the sole criterion by which any act or habit is to be judged.
On this ground, the quest of pleasure becomes the prime, or rather the
only duty. "Do that you may enjoy," is the fundamental maxim of morality.
There is no intrinsic or permanent distinction between right and wrong.
Individual experience alone can determine the right, which varies
according to the differences of taste, temperament, or culture. There are,
however, some pleasures which are more than counterbalanced by the pains
incurred in procuring them, or by those occasioned by them; and there are,