Studies in conduct . condition, but there is a too plain differencebetween those who take habitual pains to preservea healthy balance of character, and those who frit-ter away their lives in playing shilly-shally withthemselves, acting from one set of motives one dayand from another set the next, first bringing the 30 Studies in Conduct. body under, and then giving way to every appetite,to-day ascetics, and Sybarites to-morrow. The oldRoman proverb ran that nullum numen abesi si sitprudentia, and it is the absence of the virtue towhich they gave the name of prudence that wemay best express by
Studies in conduct . condition, but there is a too plain differencebetween those who take habitual pains to preservea healthy balance of character, and those who frit-ter away their lives in playing shilly-shally withthemselves, acting from one set of motives one dayand from another set the next, first bringing the 30 Studies in Conduct. body under, and then giving way to every appetite,to-day ascetics, and Sybarites to-morrow. The oldRoman proverb ran that nullum numen abesi si sitprudentia, and it is the absence of the virtue towhich they gave the name of prudence that wemay best express by worthlessness. Lack of fore-sight and vigilance, of concentration and self-con-trol, of ability to look for remote ends and to dis-cern sure means, implies that limpness and flacci-dity of character which almost ensures a crash atthe first obstacle that presents itself. And even ifthere be no crash, there is at best only a feeblehobbling along the path, instead of a vigorous andstalwart stride. IV. SMALL HE hollowness of a great deal of oursocial intercourse is a commonplacewhich makes ardent young men veryangry and eloquent and amusing^ andcrude-minded older men very sour and one declaim and the other sneer becausepeople who ask you to dinner, and are very happyto have you at their dancing-parties, decline tolend you money or to let you marry their daugh-ters. The conduct of society is constantly beingbrought back to the first principles, not of society,but of a state of nature. The inconsistency isplain. The grumblers like balls and rural fetes,bat they demand a community of goods, and thinkthey have a right to the hand of any womanthey may covet, such as could only exist in thenomadic, or even the fishing and hunting, stage of 32 Studies in Conduct. the progress of the race. They do not see that ifasking a man to dinner implies an invitation tohim to help himself to as much money as he re-quires, or to take whichever of the daughters ofthe house is
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