There is so much pinching of the spirit done in the name of morality that it is not surprising that some who care most for the spiritual side of life view all moral propagandas with some disfavor. In these few pages I simply wish to make a plea for a little sweetness and sanity from the Epicurean standpoint. Among the grossest satyrs the ideal concerns of the intellect and imagination often find their most inspiring welcome, while among moralists and reformers of human nature they are regarded with indifference or open animosity. For this reason it is important that a well defined distinction should be made in the reader’s mind between the claims of simple sanity and the absurd dreams of perfectibility which form the insensate ambition of moralists. The aims of literature can never be those of reform. Every generous mind is impelled at some time or other to try to wholly mend or end the perversities of human nature, but, in spite of the faith and example of the saints and martyrs, a few years’ experience shows the folly of it. The folly of a Utopian moralist and reformer is greater than the folly of the mob itself. Even the old Hebrew prophets, with all their fine fury and mystical reliance on the arm of Jehovah, and their undoubted leadership and influence, failed to lessen the potent and eternal allurement of carnal pleasure and indulgence one jot or tittle. The world has grown too old for any but mad persons to dream of combatting those evils which are inevitable in the constitution of things. But since nearly all the consolations of life are not inherent in human nature but are the painful conquests of the mind, are, in a word, artificial creations of man’s own subjective life, and not at all incident to the ordinary course of life in a wild and natural state, we must strive to maintain a distinction between the interests of the imagination and intellect, and the concerns of everyday human nature.