The sources of pleasure should, therefore, be multiplied to the utmost, and they should be classified, so that undue value should not be assigned any one class. Theoretically, there is nothing troublesome about this; practically, it is often an insurmountable difficulty. The pleasures of the senses are inferior to those of the emotions, and these in turn are ranked by the enjoyments which pertain to the exercise of the intellectual powers. No one of these can wholly exclude the others. They are all inseparably united in the individual entity; but the individual can enjoy only with the faculties he possesses, and in proportion to their relative strength. It is as absurd to ask more of him, as it were to invite the gouty to a foot race, or the blind to admire the colors in a painting. It is well to establish and to recognize this hierarchy of enjoyments, beginning with those of the sensations common to animal life everywhere and culminating in those of pure reason, whose crowning felicity is the pursuit of truth; it has been done, and well done, by many writers; but what has been generally overlooked is that this scheme can have small practical application to the conduct of life if it is not fully recognized that no one of these roads to happiness can be successfully pursued while the others are neglected, or branded with the sign, “Entrance forbidden.” This is where Asceticism has committed its fatal blunder, and for thousands of years has made miserable the lives of millions. Instead of self-control, it has demanded self-abnegation; instead of the due and proportioned exercise of all the powers, it has ordered the absolute disuse of some of them; quite as often of the highest as of the lowest, of reason as often as lust. Under this baleful doctrine nations have become misshapen in mind, atrophied in culture, distorted from honest nature’s rule, mean, miserable, and inefficient. Yet this same doctrine is preached to-day from thousands of pulpits in lands of highest civilization. Is it not time for the common sense of most to rise in protest against such a survival from the Dark Ages of the life of the race? Reason blushes only for pleasures which she cannot explain, and he who acquaints himself with the whole nature of man knows that all his powers and faculties have their appropriate use. The ascetic may claim a happiness all his own; but so do the extravagant and the vicious; both stand condemned before the results of their own successes.