sun; it utilized the sun. And in the same way the institution of every new church or the establishment of every new school is an invention in morals, though not a discovery of a new moral principle. Sabbath-schools were a discovery in morals; Voluntary Churches were a discovery in morals; Reform Bills were a discovery in morals. And in the world of books, we must say also that the principle of the mean asserted and systematically set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics was a great discovery in moral philosophy. The discovery consisted in the sagacity which seized, among a thousand others, a floating proverb, as alone fit, or mainly fit, for being made the corner-stone of a comprehensive canon of human conduct. To pick up a rough stone from the road, and polish it, and set it in a ring, and carve upon it the signature of the king’s imperial will, is no small achievement; and this simile precisely appraises the merit of the Stagirite, in reference to that old maxim μηδὲν ἄγαν, which we have just quoted. He has stamped it with the authority of his own regal intellect, in a manner appealing not less effectively to the analytic habits of the scientific man, than to the broad views so dear to the so-called practical man. And that he was grandly right in seizing upon this rule of conduct, no person who has ever seriously applied, himself to the wisdom of life, as to the one {157} thing needful, will hare any difficulty in admitting. For there is hardly a man of any self-knowledge who will not be willing to confess that the greatest blunders he has made in the difficult game of life have arisen from the neglect of this rule, as his most signal successes have sprung from the observance of it. The attainment of this golden mean, indeed, in one shape or another, is the constant problem of existence; and it will be difficult to point out any defects of moral character which do not arise either from a certain feebleness and deficiency of some necessary practical energy, or from the exaggeration and misapplication of virtues--a misapplication, be it observed, which almost always proceeds from an excess; for as a mother is apt to have her pet child, and an old maid her green parrot, her Skye terrier, or her tortoise-shell cat, on which she spends the overflow of her non-utilized sympathies, so every man is apt to have his pet virtue, his idol excellence, on which he prides himself, and of which he is fond of making a parade on all proper and improper occasions. It is the excessive sway of the favourite affection that makes a man blind to discern and weak to prevent its improper application. This is a great truth--and somewhat of a comfortable truth, too; for to sin by excess of good is always better than to offend from pure viciousness; and man is upon the whole (notwithstanding the floating lies of the hour, and the Devil’s Paradise in New York) a blundering rather than a diabolical creature. The importance of Aristotle’s rule arises