enjoyment for the sake of a greater to come, or to avoid a greater pain that might ensue from it. Temperance, in short, was nothing but prudence with regard to pleasure.
To support labour, to endure pain, to be exposed to danger or to death, the situations which fortitude would often lead us into, were surely still less the objects of natural de|sire. They are chosen only to avoid greater evils. We submit to labour, in order to avoid the greater shame and pain of poverty, and we expose ourselves to danger and to death in defence of our liberty and property, the means and instruments of pleasure and happiness; or in defence of our country, in the safety of which our own is necessarily comprehended. For|titude enables us to do all this chearfully, as the best which, in our present situation, can possibly be done, and is in reality no more than prudence, good judgment and presence of mind in properly appreciating pain, labour and danger, always chusing the less in order to avoid the greater.
It is the same case with justice. To ab|stain from what is anothers is not desireable upon its own account, and it cannot surely be better for you, that I should possess what
