It is of very great importance to teach men the bearings of virtue on happiness, so far as these are known.  There will, however, always remain a portion of duty that detracts from happiness, and must be done as duty, nevertheless.  Men are entitled to pursue happiness as directly as ever they please; only, they must couple with the pursuit their round of duties to others; in which they may or may not reap a share of the coveted good for self.

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Let us, next, consider some of the difficulties and mistakes attaching to the WILL.  Here there are the questions of world-renown, questions known even in Pandemonium—­Free-will, Responsibility, Moral Ability, and Inability.  It is now suspected, on good grounds, that, on these questions, we have somehow got into a wrong groove—­that we are lost in a maze of our own constructing.

[A STRONG WILL THE GIFT OF NATURE.]

I. We shall first notice a misconception akin to some of the foregoing mistakes respecting the feelings.  In addressing men with a view to spur their activity, there is usually a too low estimate of what is implied in great and energetic efforts of will.  Here, exactly as in the cheerful temperament, we find a certain constitutional endowment, a certain natural force of character, having its physical supports of brain, muscle, and other tissue; and neither persuasion, nor even education, can go very far to alter that character.  If there be anything at all in the observations of phrenology, it is the connection of energetic determination with size of brain.  Lay your hand first on the head of an energetic man, and then on the head of a feeble man, and you will find a difference that is not to be explained away.  Now it passes all the powers of persuasion and education combined to make up for a great cranial inequality.  Something always comes of assiduous discipline; but to set up a King Alfred, or a Luther, as a model to be imitated by an ordinary man, on the points of energy, perseverance, endurance, courage, is to pass the bounds of the human constitution.  Persistent energy of a high order, like the temperament for happiness, costs a great deal to the human system.  A large share of the total forces of the constitution go to support it; and the diversion of power often leaves great defects in other parts of the character, as for example, a low order of the sensibilities, and a narrow range of sympathies.  The men of extraordinary vigour and activity—­our Roman emperors and conquering heroes—­are often brutal and coarse.  Nature does not supply power profusely on all sides; and delicate sympathies, of themselves, use up a very large fraction of the forces of the organisation.  Even intellectually estimated, the power of sympathising with many various minds and conditions would occupy as much room in the brain as a language, or an accomplishment.  A man both energetic and sympathetic—­a Pericles, a King Alfred, an Oliver Cromwell—­is one of nature’s giants, several men in one.