These examples have been remarked upon in every age.  It is the moral weakness of being carried away by a present strong feeling, as if the state would last for ever, that blinds each of us in turn to the stern reality of the fact.  There are, however, numerous instances, coming under Relativity, wherein the indispensable correlative is more or less dropped out of sight and disavowed.  These are the proper errors or fallacies of Relativity, a branch of the comprehensive class termed “Fallacies of Confusion”.  The object of the present essay is to exhibit a few of these errors as they occur in questions of practical moment.

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When it is said, as by Carlyle and others, “speech is silvern, silence is golden,” there is implied a condition of things where speech has been in excess; and but for this excess, the assertion is untrue.  One might as well talk of the delights of hunger, or of cold, or of solitary confinement, on the ground of there being times when food, warmth, or society may be in excess, and when the opposing states would be a joyful change.

The Relativity of Pleasures, although admitted in many individual cases, has often been misconceived.  The view is sometimes expressed, that there can be no pleasure without a previous pain; but this goes beyond the exigencies of the principle.  We cannot go on for ever with any delight; but mere remission, without any counterpart pain, is enough for our entering with zest on many of our pleasures.  A healthy man enjoys his meals without any sensible previous pain of hunger.  We do not need to have been miserable for some time as a preparation for the reading of a new poem.  It is true that if the sense of privation has been acute, the pleasure is proportionally increased; and that few pleasures of any great intensity grow up from indifference:  still, remission and alternation may give a zest for enjoyment without any consciousness of pain.

The principle of Comparison is capriciously made use of by Paley, in his account of the elements of Happiness.  He applies it forcibly and felicitously to depreciate certain pleasures—­as greatness, rank, and station—­and withholds its application from the pleasures that he more particularly countenances,—­namely, the social affections, the exercise of the faculties, and health.

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[SIMPLICITY OF STYLE A RELATIVE MERIT.]

The great praise often accorded to Simplicity of Style, in literature, is an example of the suppression of the correlative in a case of mutual relationship.  Simplicity is not an absolute merit; it is frequently a merit by correlation.  Thus, if a certain subject has never been treated except in abstruse and difficult terminology, a man of surpassing literary powers, setting it forth in homely and intelligible language, produces a work whose highest praise is expressed by Simplicity.  Again, after the last century period of artificial, complex, and highly-wrought composition, the reaction of Cowper and Wordsworth in favour of simplicity was an agreeable and refreshing change, and was in great part acceptable because of the change.  It does not appear that Wordsworth comprehended this obvious fact; to him, a simplicity that cost nothing to the composer, and brought no novelty to the reader, had still a transcendent merit.