At those "dead points" food and fiddling are better
than philosophy.
[Footnote 2: Interest unde quis gaudeat. (S. Aug., Confess., vi., 6.)]
6. This medicinal or restorative virtue of delight is a fact to bear
in mind in debating the question how far it is right to act for the
pleasure that the action gives. It is certainly wrong to act for mere
animal gratification. Such gratification is a stimulus to us to do
that which makes for the well-being of our nature: to fling away all
intention of any good other than the delight of the action, is to
mistake the incentive for the end proposed. But this is a doctrine
easily misunderstood. An example may save it from being construed too
rigidly. Suppose a man has a vinery, and being fond of fruit he goes
there occasionally, and eats, not for hunger, but as he says, because
he likes grapes. He seems to act for mere pleasure: yet who shall be
stern enough to condemn him, so that he exceed not in quantity? If he
returns from the vinery in a more amiable and charitable mood, more
satisfied with Providence, more apt to converse with men and do his
work in the commonwealth, who can deny that in acting in view of these
ends, at least implicitly, he has taken lawful means to a proper
purpose? He has not been fed, but recreated: he has not taken
nourishment, but medicine, preventive or remedial, to a mind diseased.
Pages:
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101