It is selfishness, regard to personal _comfort_ at all hazards, which is the hopeless nature, and can not be raised except through pain.
"Speaking of Lacordaire, another favourite position of his will illustrate my point.

He was constantly inveighing in his seminary against desultory reading.

Homer, Plutarch, Racine, Bossuet, and a few other books, are all he wishes a man to have read.

He calls miscellaneous reading a subtle dissipation, a moral poison.
"It seems to me to depend entirely upon temperament.

Some natures are like _mills_, converting everything that comes in their way into grist; and in that case, no doubt, it is deleterious.