Weaklings and hypocrites like to extol the goodness of men; the former to allay their own fears, the latter because it reflects flatteringly on themselves.
It is no proof that a sentiment is noble because men are willing to die for it. More men knowingly sacrifice themselves to pleasure than to duty.
The lines of morality, observed Burke, differ from those of geometry; they have breadth as well as length, and for that reason will not form set and angular figures.
III. The Practice of Business and the Enjoyment of Society.
Let us grant that the true aim of the individual is his own highest development: he can reach it only through the ministry of his fellow beings. Vain the effort to seek expansion or happiness apart from his kind. The soul rusts in solitude; to be bright and keen it requires friction with others. Alone, it starves and pines, grows misshapen and distorted; in company, it gives and receives, assists others, and is in turn assisted. Let us do no injustice to the balm and the blessings of solitude; but the growth of the world is due to the blending and the striving of mind with mind.
The word which expresses this is Association. It conveys various degrees of intimacy, from the lowest, that of the ordinary intercourse of Business and Society, through the increasingly closer ties of Fellowship, Comradeship, and Friendship, up to that dearest of all, wherein the two sexes unite to cast the rays of life into the infinite future, Love and Marriage.
There is nothing in any of these that demands the sacrifice of the individual. The gauge which marks the high-water line in them all is one and the same—the maintenance