Beliefs are the result, as a rule, either of tradition, or of emotional experience, or of mere desire. In a few rare spirits they may be determined in more intellectual fashion; but Reason is seldom mistress, and very often she is servant and nurse. By reason, we seek to justify our prejudices and convictions. With varying degrees of intellectual dishonesty we make use of reason to reject what we dislike and nourish what we prefer. Boswell's case was somewhat uncommon. He was clearly not very critical. Having once adopted an attitude he marched through life without looking back. We have seen something of the outlook he adopted conventionally. He deceived himself, however, far less than most men of those opinions. And in the effort to believe what he wished to believe, Boswell used reason in a curiously deliberate fashion. He accepted the conventional beliefs and standards in an unconventional manner--not chaotically and aimlessly, but perceiving what the conventional aim essentially was, and approving it as a mode of living. Boswell's philosophy of life, as far as he had a philosophy, was to have in all (including, that is, the future life of happiness which he flattered himself that he would be able to enjoy) the maximum amount of pleasure. Pleasure and happiness, these are ends in themselves; and except in so far as pleasure must be restrained for the sake of happiness either in this state of being or in another--and Boswell can hardly be said to have practised restraint in any remarkable degree--they are not distinguished. Pleasure he speaks of as 'not only the aim but the end of our being.' 'To be happy,' he says, 'as far as mortality and human imperfection allow, is the wisest study of men.' In the 'Hypochondriack' essays we see how entirely Boswell's philosophy of life is a philosophy of comfort. With regard, for instance, to Love--a subject which, since three papers of 'The Hypochondriack' are devoted to it, must have been considered important--though too logical to be entirely conventional, his doctrine is frankly based upon his view of happiness: As no disorder of the imagination has produced more evils than the passion of love, it behoves us to guard ourselves with caution against its first appearance. However coldness or indifference is unpleasant, yet excess of love or fondness is bad, not only as it is not lasting, but also because it is disagreeable at the time. It is in his religious views that we see best this attitude of Boswell. While his opinions were on the one hand completely conventional, they yet depended quite consciously upon this doctrine of happiness.