[185] This fact might be employed to reënforce our prior conclusion that moral rules, classifications, etc., are not of final importance but are of value in clarifying and judging individual acts and situations. Not the rule, but the use which the person makes of the rule in approving and disapproving himself and others, is the significant thing.
[186] Less is said on this point because this phase of the matter has been covered in the discussion of self-denial in the previous chapter. See pp. 364-68.
[187] Strict hedonism would tend to reduce all virtue to prudence—the calculation of subtler and remoter consequences and the control of present behavior by its outcome.
[188] Says Hazlitt, "The charm of criminal life, like that of savage life, consists in liberty, in hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of death: in one word, in extraordinary excitement" (Essay on Bentham). But this is equally true in principle (though not in degree) of every temptation to turn from the straight and narrow path. Virtue seems dull and sober, uninteresting, in comparison with the increasing excitation of some desire. There are as many forms of excitement as there are individual men.
[189] There is something of the nature of gambling, of taking chances on future results for the sake of present stimulation, in all unrestraint or intemperate action. And the reflection of the specialist—that is, the one whose reflection is not subjected to responsible tests in social behavior—is a more or less exciting adventure—a "speculation."
[190] In the last words of Spinoza's Ethics, "No one delights in the good because he curbs his appetites, but because we delight in the good we are able to curb our lusts."
[191] What has been said about Self-assertion, in the last chapter, anticipates in some measure what holds of this virtue.
[192] See Sumner, Folkways, ch. xx.
[193] Upon this point see James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. II., pp. 561-567, and Royce, World and Individual, Vol. II., pp. 354-360.
[194] This receives more attention in ch. xxi. of Part III.