"Truths that form the basis of political and moral science are not to be discovered but by investigations as severe as mathematical ones, and beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.... They are not to be forced into detached and general propositions, unincumbered with explanations and exceptions. They will not compress themselves into epigrams. They recoil from the tongue and the pen of the declaimer. They flourish not in the same soil with sentiment. They grow among thorns; and are not to be plucked, like daisies, by infants as they run.... There is no _King's Road_ ... to legislative, any more than to mathematical science."[119] Arguments not unlike, however, may be adduced in favor of the attitude theory. =1. It, and It Alone, Places Morality in the High and Authoritative Place Which by Right Characterizes It.=--Morality is not just a means of reaching other ends; it is an end in itself. To reduce virtue to a tool or instrumentality for securing pleasure is to prostitute and destroy it. Unsophisticated common sense is shocked at putting morality upon the same level with prudence, policy, and expediency. Morality is morality, just because it possesses an absolute authoritativeness which they lack. =2. The Morally Good Must be Within the Power of the Individual to Achieve.=--The amount of pleasure and pain the individual experiences, his share of satisfaction, depends upon outward circumstances which are beyond his control, and which accordingly have no moral significance. Only the beginning, the willing, of an act lies with the man; its conclusion, its outcome in the way of consequences, lies with the gods. Accident, misfortune, unfavorable circumstance, may shut the individual within a life of sickness, misery, and discomfort. They may deprive him of external goods; but they cannot modify the moral good, for that resides in the attitude with which one faces these conditions and results. Conditions hostile to prosperity may be only the means of calling forth virtues of bravery, patience, and amiability. Only consequences within character itself, the tendency of an act to form a habit or to cultivate a disposition, are really of moral significance.