rightfully due to him for such display. There is, however, a greater opposition between the man who thinks meanly of himself and the great-minded man, than between this man and the conceited, person; for in truth the mean abnegation of self, the cheapening of a man’s capabilities, and despair of all lofty achievement, is of more common occurrence amongst the masses, and on account of its negative character leads in the practical warfare of life to more sad results.”[181.1] For commenting on some of the remarkable characteristics of this chapter, hovering as they do so delicately on the slippery border that separates a justifiable pride from a salutary humility, more apt occasion may present itself in our next discourse; in the meantime it will serve more the purpose of the present inquiry to ask, whether there may not be grave objections to a system of ethics based on the mere prudential calculation of a mean? and whether, granting this calculation to be wise and salutary, so far as it goes, it may not require to be strengthened by some stronger force than any which the philosophy of the Stagirite supplies? Now, in the first place, here there is one very common class {182} of objections to the doctrine of the μέσον, to which we hope the whole tone of our previous remarks has already supplied the answer. “_Is it possible_,” some one has often asked, “_to possess too much love? Of what good emotion is envy the exaggeration? Can any modification of spite be virtuous? Can any mere deficiency of the quality of truth account for the viciousness of a positive lie?_” To some of these objections Aristotle has himself supplied the answer; but the best general answer to all is their impertinence as bearing upon a treatise which does not pretend to set forth a curious definition, proof against every subtle objection, but only to supply a useful practical rule. Whosoever accepts the _Nicomachean Ethics_ in the practical spirit in which it was written, will soon find, perhaps by no very pleasant experience, that there is nothing more common among good people than to have too much even of such a rare virtue as Christian love; for there is too much always when there is too much for the occasion, or too much for the use or the abuse that is likely to be made of it; and unchastened generosity, inconsiderate philanthropy, and indiscriminate kindness are certainly not among the rarest of social faults. Equally certain is it that some of our most odious vices are only the despotic usurpations of certain instincts, natural and healthy in themselves, and when acting under the habitual check of other instincts equally natural, so as to preserve the just balance of a harmonious whole. Thus envy is merely the natural fruit of a salutary rivalry, when a generous sympathy is wanting; it is an odious state of mind arising out of an excess of rivalry on the one hand, and a deficiency of sympathy on the other. Let this style {183} of objections therefore pass.