Note 101 — Chapter V · PROBATION, AS INTENDED FOR MORAL DISCIPLINE AND IMPROVEMENT.

[A forced or reluctant obedience is wholly incompatible with earthly happiness; but may, in the highest degree promote our future happiness. It will not long mar our happiness, even here; because being based on principle, and established by habit, it will, in process of time, be superseded by prompt and pleasurable submission. Thus a person habitually virtuous, is hardly conscious of self-denial; a fact noticed by Aristotle. “He who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights, is virtuous in this very abstinence; but he who is troubled by it is undisciplined.” Ethic. Nic. ii. 3.]