But however the case may have fared with philosophy, in common life these principles are still implicitly maintained; nor is any other topic of praise or blame ever recurred to, when we employ any panegyric or satire, any applause or censure of human action and behaviour.  If we observe men, in every intercourse of business or pleasure, in every discourse and conversation, we shall find them nowhere, except the schools, at any loss upon this subject.  What so natural, for instance, as the following dialogue?  You are very happy, we shall suppose one to say, addressing himself to another, that you have given your daughter to Cleanthes.  He is a man of honour and humanity.  Every one, who has any intercourse with him, is sure of fair and kind treatment. [Footnote:  Qualities useful to others.] I congratulate you too, says another, on the promising expectations of this son-in-law; whose assiduous application to the study of the laws, whose quick penetration and early knowledge both of men and business, prognosticate the greatest honours and advancement. [Footnote:  Qualities useful to the person himself.] You surprise me, replies a third, when you talk of Cleanthes as a man of business and application.  I met him lately in a circle of the gayest company, and he was the very life and soul of our conversation:  so much wit with good manners; so much gallantry without affectation; so much ingenious knowledge so genteelly delivered, I have never before observed in any one. [Footnote:  Qualities immediately agreeable to others,] You would admire him still more, says a fourth, if you knew him more familiarly.  That cheerfulness, which you might remark in him, is not a sudden flash struck out by company:  it runs through the whole tenor of his life, and preserves a perpetual serenity on his countenance, and tranquillity in his soul.  He has met with severe trials, misfortunes as well as dangers; and by his greatness of mind, was still superior to all of them [Footnote:  Qualities immediately agreeable to the person himself].  The image, gentlemen, which you have here delineated of Cleanthes, cried I, is that of accomplished merit.  Each of you has given a stroke of the pencil to his figure; and you have unawares exceeded all the pictures drawn by Gratian or Castiglione.  A philosopher might select this character as a model of perfect virtue.

And as every quality which is useful or agreeable to ourselves or others is, in common life, allowed to be a part of personal merit; so no other will ever be received, where men judge of things by their natural, unprejudiced reason, without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion.  Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of