it observed, that we are demanding no mathematical accuracy. We demand
only that the presentation shall be accurate enough to let us recognise
its corresponding fact in life.

Now what is a code of morals, and why has the world any need of one? A
code of morals is a number of restraining orders; it rigorously bids us
walk in certain paths. But why? What is the use of bidding us? Because
there are a number of other paths that we are naturally inclined to walk
in. The right path is right because it leads to the highest kind of
happiness; the wrong paths are wrong because they lead to lower kinds of
happiness. But when men choose vice instead of virtue, what is
happening? They are considering the lower or the lesser happiness better
than the greater or the higher. It is this mistake that is the essence
and cause of immorality; it is this mistake that mankind is ever
inclined to make, and it is only because of this inclination that any
moral system is of any general value.

Were we all naturally inclined to morality, the analysis of it, it is
true, might have great speculative interest; but a moral system would
not be needed as it is for a great practical purpose. The law, as we all
know, has arisen because of transgressions, and the moralist has to
meddle with human nature mainly because it is inconstant and corrupted.
It is a wild horse that has not so much to be broken, once for all, as
to be driven and reined in perpetually. And the art of the moralist is,
by opening the mind's eye to the true end of life, to make us sharply
conscious of what we lose by losing it. And the men to whom we shall
chiefly want to present this end are not men, let us remember, who
desire to see it, or who will seek for it of their own accord, but men
who are turned away from it, and on whose sight it must be thrust. It is
not the righteous but the sinners that have to be called to repentance.