Note 43 — THE LIFE, &c. (continued 2)

The wise and magnanimous Pythagoreans, Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics, among the ancients, looked to virtue as its own reward, and performed what is right, because it is right to do so. And though they firmly believed in the immortality of the soul, their conduct was not at all influenced by the hope of future reward. This great truth indeed, that virtue brings with it its own recompense, is almost at present obsolete; and it is no unusual thing to hear a man, when afflicted, exclaiming with Methodistical cant,