This obstinate love of the pleasures of the world--a love which, as it
were, outlives itself; this utterly incorrigible sin, this refined
and sublimated desire of the flesh, is the abstract form in which all
lusts are concentrated, and to which it stands like a general idea to
individual particulars. Accordingly, Avarice is the vice of age, just
as extravagance is the vice of youth.
This _disputatio in utramque partem_--this debate for and against--is
certainly calculated to drive us into accepting the _juste milieu_
morality of Aristotle; a conclusion that is also supported by the
following consideration.
Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens
to pass; but it is also true that every defect is allied to a
perfection. Hence it is that if, as often happens, we make a mistake
about a man, it is because at the beginning of our acquaintance with
him we confound his defects with the kinds of perfection to which they
are allied. The cautious man seems to us a coward; the economical man,
a miser; the spendthrift seems liberal; the rude fellow, downright and
sincere; the foolhardy person looks as if he were going to work with a
noble self-confidence; and so on in many other cases.
* * * * *
No one can live among men without feeling drawn again and again to the
tempting supposition that moral baseness and intellectual incapacity
are closely connected, as though they both sprang direct from one
source.
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