I may be told, “Is it thus you train up young gentlemen? Did his father recommend him, when a boy, and deliver him to you, that you might initiate his youth in lewdness and pleasures? Wilt thou be an advocate for such a course of life and studies?” My lords, if there is a man endued with such fortitude of soul, with such dispositions to virtue and chastity, as to reject all pleasures, as to finish his career of life with the toils of the body, and the pursuits of the mind; a man who has no taste for repose, none for relaxation, none for the pleasures of his equals, none for diversions, none for banquets; who is persuaded that in life there ought to be no end proposed, that does not unite the great with the graceful; I shall freely own, that he is furnished, that he is embellished with certain supernatural qualifications: such, I take it, were the Camilli, the Fabricii, the Curii, and all those heroes, who, from a narrow foundation, reared this empire to such glory and greatness.

But virtues such as theirs, are not now to be found in the lives, nay, scarce in the writings, of mankind. Even the very scrolls which contain this severity of former ages, are antiquated, not only with us, who have professed such an institution, and such a method of living, more by our actions than our words, but even with the Greeks, those very learned philosophers, who, when they could no longer practise what was honest and great in life, were still at liberty to recommend it in their speeches and writings. Another system of morality has prevailed since new customs were introduced into Greece.

For this reason some of their sages maintained, that pleasure is the ultimate end of the actions of the wise; nor have even men of learning been averse to that shameful tenet. Others have thought, that dignity ought to be united with pleasure, that they might have an opportunity to talk things, which, in their own natures, had a direct repugnancy to one another, into union. They who maintained, that the only way to glory was through toil, are now left almost solitary within their schools; for many are the blandishments that nature herself has implanted within us, and which the lethargy of virtue indulges; many slippery paths does she point out to youth, in which they can scarce either stand or tread, without a misfortune or a fall; and great is the pleasing variety she affords, with which mankind, not only in their bloom, but even in their maturity, are apt to be enchanted. Therefore, if, by chance, you find a man whose eye despises the beauty of order, who indulges no sensation of smell, touch, or taste, and whose ears shut out all harmony, I, and a few others, perhaps, may think that the gods have blessed such a person; but many more will think that they have cursed him.