helpful to labour: it is enough that he accepts the subordination of
pleasure to work as nature has ordained it; and this ordinance he does
accept, if he puts forth no positive volition the other way, whether
expressly, as none but a wrong-headed theologian is likely to do, or
virtually, by taking his pleasure with such greediness that the motion
of his will is all spent therein as in its last end and terminus, so
that the pleasure ceases to be referable to aught beyond itself, a
case of much easier occurrence. Or lastly, the natural subordination
of pleasure to work may be set aside, defeated, and rendered
impossible by the whole tenour of an individual's life, if he be one
of those giddy butterflies who flit from pleasure to pleasure and do
no work at all. Till late in the morning he sleeps, then breakfasts,
then he shoots, lunches, rides, bathes, dines, listens to music,
smokes, and reads fiction till late at night, then sleeps again; and
this, or the like of this is his day, some three hundred days at least
in the year. This is not mere acting for pleasure, it is living for
pleasure, or acting for pleasure so continuously as to leave no scope
for any further end of life. It may be hard to indicate the precise
hour in which this man's pleasure-seeking passes into sin: still this
is clear, his life is not innocent. Clear him of gluttony and lust,
there remains upon him the sin of sloth and of a wasted existence.

7. Even the very highest of delights, the delight of contemplation, is
not the highest of goods, but a concomitant of the highest good. The
highest good is the final object of the will: but the object of the
will is not the will's own act: we do not will willing, as neither do
we understand understanding, not at least without a reflex effort.
What we will in contemplating is, not to be delighted, but to see.
This is the subjective end and happiness of man, to see, to
contemplate. Delight is not anything objective: neither is it the