Do not starve your horse to save your hay.
When you deliver a eulogy on a plutocrat, you had better dwell on his millions than on his methods of getting them.
III. The Pleasures we may Derive from our Senses.
The odious doctrine of the ascetics has been that whatever is agreeable to man is offensive to God; and that to cultivate the pleasurable sensations is to prepare one’s self for perdition.
Far more sane than they was that Mohammedan teacher quoted by Gibbon, who, when asked to describe the true believers, replied,—“They are the elect of God, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their own natural faculties.”
As mistaken as the ascetics, are those wooden-souled disciplinarians who maintain that we should not look for recreation in our daily work, but put off the thoughts of it to holidays and vacations. These are but one degree better than those hypocrites who will tell you that benevolence should have no place in business, and who will offer you a round sum for a public charity, while they squeeze the salaries of their shop-girls down to the lowest quarter-of-a-dollar.
Down with such imposters! Each hour of our lives is the best hour for enjoying ourselves and for providing others the means of enjoyment; and there is no better
way to accomplish both these objects than that suggested by the pious Arab,—“The improvement of our own natural faculties.”