Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/32

 we not already an eternal right to a warm down bed? I think not now of the deepest mattress in the earth, because we are so pierced with stigmas of the past, so covered with its wounds.

You once said to me: "In your early years, you have been drawn and driven from the stoic philosophy by Sorites; for if the sensation of pleasure be as little as the stoics pretend, it were wiser to convert than to benefit your neighbor,—wiser to preach morality from pulpit and desk than to practise it in the work-rooms,—wiser to turn towards your neighbor the dirt-balls and soap-pills of moral philosophy, than the enlarged marble soap-bubbles of joy. Further, that it is a mistake to assert that virtue makes more worthy of happiness, if happiness possessed not an eternal, independent value in itself; for else it might be maintained that virtue would make the possessor of a straw, &c. worthy—"

You said this once. Do you believe it yet?—I do.