So, when we speak of the misery of a nation at the time of some great trouble--the French Revolution, for example--it is difficult to remember how small was the proportion of actual sufferers; how many thousands or millions of children were enjoying their little sports, utterly ignorant of the distant storm; how many mothers were absorbed in watching their children; and how many quiet commonplace people were going about their daily peaceful labour, pretty much as usual, and with only a vague--and possibly pleasurable--excitement at the news, which occasionally drifted to them, of the catastrophes in a different sphere. Carlyle, in one of his most vivid and famous passages, has incidentally drawn the contrast. Or, if we try to form an estimate of the balance of happiness and misery through any portion of the race, and appeal to experience for an answer, we must certainly remember how limited is the field of observation, even of the best informed, and the most impartial; how rigidly they are confined for their direct knowledge to one little section of one part of the race; and how the vast majority--the thousand millions or so who are altogether beyond their ken--are known to them only by statistical tables or the casual reports of superficial observers. As there are so many difficulties in forming an estimate, as we are not agreed as to the true ends of human life, nor as to the degrees in which those ends are actually attained, nor as to the efficacy of the various causes which determine the success or failure of the means employed, it becomes any one to put forward his own opinion upon the topics to which such considerations apply, with all modesty. And, yet, I think that I may dwell upon some truths which may be admitted by those who differ upon these difficult problems, and, as I fancy, deserve more weight than they generally receive, even though they have become commonplaces. The main condition of human happiness, say some people, is physical health. A man whose organs are all working satisfactorily cannot fail to be happy under any but very abnormal conditions; as, conversely, a grain of sand in the wrong place will make any life a burden. No one will dispute the truth contained in such _dicta_; and, perhaps, as we realise more distinctly the importance of sound health to our neighbours and to our descendants, as well as to ourselves, we shall lay greater stress upon the conduct which is conducive to its preservation. We shall see that what is, apparently, a mere dictate of personal prudence, has, also, its ethical aspect. But, without dwelling upon this view, we may apply the analogy to society. Whatever morality precisely means, and whatever happiness means, it clearly indicates what we call--and I think that it is no mere metaphor--a healthy state of society. This, again, implies, first of all, the health of those domestic relations which are as the ultimate molecular forces which bind together the social tissue. The