" [Footnote: An excellent brief plea for this
ideal of the life that shall be rich in experience can be found in
Walter Pater's Renaissance, the "Conclusion."] In contrast to these
followers are afraid of impulse, those who warn and rebuke and seek
to save life from its pitfalls. We shall think of Buddha, the Stoics,
the Hebrew prophets, the mediaeval saints, Dante and Savonarola, the
English and American Puritans, or, in modern times, of Tolstoy. The
ideal of such men is expressed not by the wholesomely happy and carefree
Greek gods, but by haloed saint, by the calm-eyed Buddha of Eastern
lands, by the figure of Christ on the cross. The answer to the
Epicurean's heedlessness is expressed in such lines as "What is this
world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright."
It is condensed in the familiar "Respice finem"; the peace of its self-
denial shines out in Christ's "Not my will but thine," and in Dante's
"In His will is our peace." Meager and cold and repellent as this ideal
in its extreme expressions often seems, it appeals to us as the softer
and irresponsible ideal of the Epicureans cannot. But obviously our
way lies between the extremes. And after all that has now been said,
our summary of the dangers inherent in each ideal may be very brief.
What are the evils in undue self-indulgence?
Apart from the selfishness of self-indulgence, which is obvious upon
the surface, but with which we are not now concerned,
(1) Self-indulgence, if unbridled, leads almost inevitably to pain,
disease, and premature death.
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