Or, again, he is invited to join in some
popular movement which he believes to be of a questionable or pernicious
tendency, and, because he believes that to take part in it would be
untrue to his own convictions and possibly harmful to others, he
refrains from doing so, at the risk of losing preferment, or custom, or
patronage. Then, we are all familiar with the difficulties in which men
are often placed, when they have to record a vote; their convictions and
the claims of the public service being on one side, and their own
interests and prospects on the other. In all these cases it is true
that, if their moral nature be in a healthy condition, they approve, on
reflexion, of having taken the more generous course, while it is often a
matter of life-long regret if they have sacrificed their nobler impulses
to their selfish interests. And, taking into account these
after-feelings of self-approbation and self-disapprobation, it is often
the case, and is always the case where these feelings are very strong,
that a man gains more happiness, in the long run, by following the path
of duty and obeying his social impulses than by confining himself to the
narrow view which would be dictated by a cool calculation of what is
most likely to conduce to his own private good. But, where the moral
feelings are not strong, and still more where they are almost in
abeyance, I fear that the theory that virtue and happiness are
invariably coincident will hardly be supported by a candid examination
of facts.
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