CHAPTER IV

Though the close relationship that subsists between morals and happiness
is universally acknowledged, I do not belong to the school which
believes that pleasure and pain, either actual or anticipated, are the
only motives by which the human will can be governed; that virtue
resolves itself ultimately into well-considered interest and finds its
ultimate reason in the happiness of those who practise it; that 'all our
virtues,' as La Rochefoucauld has said, 'end in self-love as the rivers
in the sea.' Such a proverb as 'Honesty is the best policy' represents
no doubt a great truth, though it has been well said that no man is
really honest who is only honest through this motive, and though it is
very evident that it is by no means an universal truth but depends
largely upon changing and precarious conditions of laws, police, public
opinion, and individual circumstances. But in the higher realms of
morals the coincidence of happiness and virtue is far more doubtful. It
is certainly not true that the highest nature is necessarily or even
naturally the happiest. Paganism has produced no more perfect type than
the profoundly pathetic figure of Marcus Aurelius, while Christianity
finds its ideal in one who was known as the 'Man of Sorrows.' The
conscience of Mankind has ever recognised self-sacrifice as the supreme
element of virtue, and self-sacrifice is never real when it is only the
exchange of a less happiness for a greater one. No moral chemistry can
transmute the worship of Sorrow, which Goethe described as the essence
of Christianity, into the worship of happiness, and probably with most
men health and temperament play a far larger part in the real happiness
of their lives than any of the higher virtues. The satisfaction of
accomplished duty which some moralists place among the chief pleasures
of life is a real thing in so far as it saves men from internal
reproaches, but it is probable that it is among the worst men that pangs
of conscience are least dreaded, and it is certainly not among the best
men that they are least felt. Conscience, indeed, when it is very
sensitive and very lofty, is far more an element of suffering than the
reverse. It aims at an ideal higher than we can attain. It takes the
lowest view of our own achievements. It suffers keenly from the many
shortcomings of which it is acutely sensible. Far from indulging in the
pleasurable retrospect of a well-spent life, it urges men to con