As beauty of mind, soul, and body, is their aim, a beautiful person is held in the highest honour.  Prizes are offered for beauty, and statues are erected to the winners.  Many are called after some particular trait; for example, “Timare of the lovely toes,” and a pretty eyelash is a title to public fame.  Beauty they say is twice blessed, since it pleases the possessor as well as others.

The sense of existence, apart from what they do or gain, is their chief happiness.  Their “ealo,” or the height of felicity, is a passive rather than an active state.  It is (if I am not mistaken) a kind of serene rapture or tranquil ecstasy of the soul, which is born doubtless from a perfect harmony between the person and his environment.  In it, they say, the illusion of the world is complete, and life is another name for music and love.

As far as I could learn, this condition, though independent of sexual love, is enhanced by it.  On the one hand it is spoiled by too much thought, and on the other by too much passion.  They cherish it as they cherish all the natural illusions (which are sacred in their eyes), but being a state of repose it is transient, and only to be enjoyed from time to time.

Since an unfit employment is a mistake, and a source of unhappiness, everyone is free to choose the work that suits his nature.  Parents and teachers only help him to discover himself.  One is called to his work by a love for it, and the pleasure he takes in doing it easily and well.  If his bent is vague or tardy, he is allowed to change, and feel his way to it by trial.  Since the work or vocation is not a means of living, there is no compulsion in it.  Their aim is to do right in carrying out the true intentions of Nature.

For the same reason everyone is free to choose the partner of his life.  They are monogamists, and believe that nothing can justify marriage but love on both sides.  The rite is very simple, and consists in the elected pair sipping from the same dish of sacred water.  It is called “drinking of the cup.”

Most of them die gradually of old age, and they do not seem to share our fear and horror of death, but to regard it with a sad and pleasing melancholy.  The body is reduced to ashes on a pyre of fragrant wood, and the songs they sing around it only breathe a tender regret for their loss, mingled with a joyful hope of meeting again.  They neither preserve the dust as a memento, nor wear any kind of mourning; but they cherish the memory of the absent in their hearts.

They believe that labour like virtue is a necessity, and its own reward; but it is moderate labour of the right sort, which is a blessing and not a curse.  They all seem happy at their work, which is often cheered by music, songs, or tales.  Everyone enjoys his task, and tries to attain the perfection of skill and grace.  Those who excel are honoured, and sometimes commemorated with statues.