There are many more contradictions in Pope's epistle, which is a tissue of inconsistency and incoherence. He might have maintained a less absolute doctrine with complete success. He might have shown that the inequalities are less than they appear on a superficial view. He might have pointed out that ultimate happiness can only arise from the conduct which puts us at peace with ourselves and with God. He might have dwelt on the satisfaction which lifts up the mind when conscience asserts its majesty, and refuses to make the least concession to suffering. The remaining disproportion between happiness and virtue is vindicated by the moral blessing of affliction, which by fitting man for happiness prepares the way for perfect harmony between happiness and virtue in a blessed immortality. Trials, in the magnificent phrase of Shakespeare, are "our outward consciences."[920] The pains of the last sickness which precedes death are the consistent termination to the scheme. Good men die as they have lived, in more or less suffering, that the work of life may be completed,--that their better qualities may be developed and strengthened, the remains of evil laid bare and extinguished. And though all men are not submitted to the same tests either in their lives or their deaths, the endless variety in their dispositions accounts for the diversity in their circumstances. The Almighty Being who alone knows the secrets of the heart adapts the "outward conscience" to the inward. There is a weightier question than the distribution of happiness. Of the innumerable discussions on the theory of morals by far the most important is whether the end we propose to ourselves should be self-interest or virtue. Pope adopted the selfish system without reserve. The two principles, he says, which govern man, "self-love and reason, aspire to one end, pleasure," and since their end is the same, he accused the schoolmen of being "at war about a name" when they refused to confound them.[921] He apparently had not a suspicion that schoolmen, or any one else, had ever imagined that reason could reveal another end to man than interest well understood. He reverts to his selfish system in the epistle on Happiness, and proclaims in the first line that "happiness is our being's end and aim." Virtue, the love of God and man, are only means to promote our individual happiness, and selfishness is, and ought to be, the supreme end of every creature. The doctrine, as we have seen, when discussing Pope's second epistle, contradicts the universal human conscience. The theoretical falsehood is fruitful in disastrous results. The moral law, the law of good in itself, is greater than the individual, and he bows down before its inviolable sanctity, its absolute right to dominion. He is raised above personal consequences. He knows that the universal law of good embraces his good, and the reflection helps to sustain him in his trials, but his