CHAPTER VI.
LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD.
'_If in this life only we have hope_--' What we have now before us is a certain subtraction sum.

We have to take from life one of its strongest present elements; and see as well as we can what will then be the remainder.

An exact answer we shall, of course, not expect; but we can arrive at an approximate one without much difficulty.
What we have to subtract has been shown in the previous chapter; but it may again be described briefly in the following way.

Life in its present state, as we have just seen, is a union of two sets of feelings, and of two kinds of happiness, and is partly the sum of the two, and partly a compromise between them.

Its resources, by one classification, are separable into two groups, according as in themselves they chance to repel or please us; and the most obvious measure of happiness would seem to be nothing more than our gain of what is thus pleasant, and our shirking of what is thus painful.