sensitive part of himself. This has to be done
daily, hourly, momently, in order that the
draught of life may steadily increase. And to
do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own
schoolmaster, must recognise that he is always
in need of wisdom, must be ready to practise
any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly
against himself, in order to gain his
end. It becomes evident to any one who regards
the subject seriously, that only a man who has
the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary
and the stoic has any chance of entering
the Golden Gates. He must be capable of
testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction
every joy existence has to give; and he must
be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and
that without suffering from the denial. When
he has accomplished the development of this
double possibility, then he is able to begin
sifting his pleasures and taking away from his
consciousness those which belong absolutely to
the man of clay. When those are put back,
there is the next range of more refined pleasures
to be dealt with. The dealing with these
which will enable a man to find the essence of
life is not the method pursued by the stoic
philosopher. The stoic does not allow that
there is joy within pleasure, and by denying
himself the one loses the other. But the true
philosopher, who has studied life itself without