“The very common plan of working very hard during the best years of your life, in order that you may heap up security for future comfort, is, I think we are all agreed, a very mistaken one. It is much wiser to be satisfied with a less amount of security, and enjoy your ease while your spirits and health remain unimpaired, and before your habits are so far fixed as to render any change undesirable. Still there is an amount of security which is necessary to prevent care and anxiety; but that necessary amount will, of course, be proportionate to the scale of living you may adopt. “To me it appears to be of very little consequence whether we are consistent or not, but it is very important to be right. “If we have been right hitherto, we should make no change because we have been right; if we have been wrong, it would be unwise to continue so for the sake of being consistent. I know that right and wrong are here comparative; and that it may be wise to continue in a path which you have already trodden, though it may not be the most direct, or the least rugged, rather than encounter the hedges and ditches which may lie between you and the straight and even road. But if you can satisfy yourself that the advantages of the direct road will, in all probability, more than balance the labour and risk of getting into it, you would be foolish not to make the change. I am not begging the question by assuming that the proposed course is the best; I only wish to show on what grounds the propriety of a change ought to be discussed.