t efficacy over the passing thought;
and reason teaches this passing thought to believe in and to respect
them equally. Their right is not less clear, nor their influence less
natural, because they may range over the whole universe and may await
their realisation at the farthest boundaries of time. All that is
physically requisite to their operation is that they should be vividly
represented; while all that is requisite rationally, to justify them in
qualifying actual life by their influence, is that the present act
should have some tendency to bring the represented values about. In
other words, a rational mind would consider, in its judgment and action,
every interest which that judgment or action at all affected; and it
would conspire with each represented good in proportion, not to that
good's intrinsic importance, but to the power which the present act
might have of helping to realise that good.

[Sidenote: The sanction of reason is happiness.]

If pleasure, because it is commonly a result of satisfied instinct, may
by a figure of speech be called the aim of impulse, happiness, by a like
figure, may be called the aim of reason. The direct aim of reason is
harmony; yet harmony, when made to rule in life, gives reason a noble
satisfaction which we call happiness. Happiness is impossible and even
inconceivable to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven
by craving, pleasure, and fear. The moralists who speak disparagingly of
happiness are less sublime than they think. In truth their philosophy is
too lightly ballasted, too much fed on prejudice and quibbles, for
happiness to fall within its range. Happiness implies resource and
security; it can be achieved only by discipline. Your intuitive moralist
rejects discipline, at least discipline of the conscience; and he is
punished by having no lien on wisdom. He trusts to the clash of blind
forces in collision, being one of them himself. He demands that virtue
should be partisan and unjust; and he dreams of crushing the adversary
in some physical cataclysm.

Such groping enthusiasm is often innocent and romantic; it captivates us
with its youthful spell. But it has no structure with which to resist
the shocks of fortune, which it goes out so jauntily to meet. It turns
only too often into vulgarity and worldliness. A snow-flake is soon a
smudge, and there is a deeper purity in the diamond. Happiness is hidden
from a free and casual will; it belongs rather to o