virtue will give this chance its due value, neither more nor
less.

Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty. For
hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often
still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us
into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure.
When men burn their fingers through following after pleasure they find
out their mistake and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily
than when they have burnt them through following after a fancied duty, or
a fancied idea concerning right virtue. The devil, in fact, when he
dresses himself in angel's clothes, can only be detected by experts of
exceptional skill, and so often does he adopt this disguise that it is
hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people
will follow after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable and on
the whole much more trustworthy guide.

Returning to Mr Pontifex, over and above his having lived long and
prosperously, he left numerous offspring, to all of whom he communicated
not only his physical and mental characteristics, with no more than the
usual amount of modification, but also no small share of characteristics
which are less easily transmitted--I mean his pecuniary characteristics.
It may be said that he acquired these by sitting still and letting money
run, as it were, right up against him, but against how many does not
money run who do not take it when it does, or who, even if they hold it
for a little while, cannot so incorporate it with themselves that it
shall descend through them to their offspring? Mr Pontifex did this. He
kept what he may be said to have made, and money is like a reputation for
ability--more easily made than kept.

Take him, then, for all in all, I am not inclined to be so severe upon
him as my father was. Judge him according to any very lofty standard,
and he is nowhere. Judge him according to a fair average standard, and
there is not much fault to be found with him. I have said what I have
said in the foregoing chapter once for all, and shall not break my thread
to repeat it. It should go without saying in modification of the verdict
which the reader may be inclined to pass too hastily, not only upon Mr
George Pontifex, but also upon Theobald and Christina. And now I will
continue my story.

CHAPTER XX

The birth of his son opened Theobald's eyes to a good