'_For a joyful life, that is to say a pleasant life_,' as Sir Thomas More pithily puts it, '_is either evil; and if so, then thou shouldest not only help no man thereto, but rather as much as in thee lieth withdraw all men from it as noisome and hurtful; or else if thou not only mayest, but also of duty art bound to procure it for others, why not chiefly for thyself, to whom thou art bound to show as much favour and gentleness as to others ?_' The fundamental question is, then, what life should a man try to procure for himself?
How shall he make it most joyful?
and how joyful will it be when he has done his utmost for it?
It is in terms of the individual, and of the individual only, that the value of life can at first be intelligibly stated.

If the coin be not itself genuine, we shall never be able to make it so by merely shuffling it about from hand to hand, nor even by indefinitely multiplying it.

A million sham bank notes will not make us any richer than a single one.

Granting that the riches are really genuine, then the knowledge of their diffusion may magnify for each of us our own pleasure in possessing them.

But it will only do this if the share that is possessed by each be itself something very great to begin with.