a worthy
and honorable member.

Life, however, is not this steady march to victory, with beating drums
and flying banners, which, for the sake of continuity in description, we
have thus far regarded it. There are hard battles to fight; and mighty
foes to conquer. We must now return to those other possible relations
which we left when we selected for immediate consideration that one
right relation which we call duty.

Since there is only one right relation between self and an object, all
others must be wrong. These other possible relations are temptations.
Temptation is the appeal of an object to a single side of our nature as
against the well-being of self as a whole. Each object gives rise to
many temptations. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction."

Just as duty performed gives rise to virtue, so temptation, yielded to,
begets vice. Vice is the habitual yielding to temptation.

Temptations fall into two classes. Either we are tempted to neglect an
object, and so to give it too little influence over us; or else we are
tempted to be carried away by an object, and to give it an excessive and
disproportionate place in our life. Hence the resulting vices fall into
two classes. Vices resulting from the former sort of temptation are
vices of defect. Vices resulting from the latter form of temptation are
vices of excess. As one of these temptations is usually much stronger
than the other, we will discuss simply the strongest and most
characteristic temptation in connection with each object. Yet as both
classes of vice exist with reference to every object, it will be best to
consider both.

Vice carries its penalty in its own nature. Being a perversion of some
object, it renders impossible that realization of ourselves through the
object, or in the higher relations, that realization of the object
through us, on which the harmony and completeness of our life depends.
In the words of Plato: "Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being
of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the
soul."

Each chapter will follow the order here developed. The outline on pp. x,
xi shows the logical framework on which the book is constructed. Under
the limitations of such a table, confined to a single term in every
case, it is of course impossible to avoid the appearance of
artificiality of form and inadequacy of treatment. This collection of
dry bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a glanc