Surround him, in imagination, with the most favourable circumstances; let social progress have been carried to the utmost perfection; and let him have access to every happiness of which we can conceive him capable.

It is impossible even thus to conceive of life as a very valuable possession to him.

It would at any rate be far less valuable than it is to many men now, under outer circumstances that are far less favourable.

The goal to which a purely human progress is capable of conducting us, is thus no vague condition of glory and felicity, in which men shall develop new and ampler powers.

It is a condition in which, the keenest life attainable has continually been far surpassed already, without anything having been arrived at that in itself seemed of surpassing value.
FOOTNOTES: [23] 'Hippolyta .-- _This is the silliest stuff I ever heard._ Theseus .-- _The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst no worse, if imagination amend them._ Hippolyta .-- _It must be your imagination then, not theirs._'-- Midsummer's Night's Dream, Act V.
'_Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts._'-- Prologue to Henry V.
[24] Seneca says of virtue, '_Non quia delectat placet, sed quia placet delectat_.' Of vice in the same way we may say, '_Non quia delectat_ pudet, _sed quia_ pudet _delectat_.' [25] It will be of course recollected that in this abstraction of the moral sense, we have to abstract it from the characters as well as ourselves.
[26] '_When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation.