Aristotle once said that self-indulgence is motivated by pleasure while cowardice is motivated by pain. Pain upsets and destroys the nature of a man experiencing pain, but pleasure does not, so self-indulgence is classified as more voluntary than cowardice and more reprehensible. The acts of a self-indulgent man are always voluntary. I find this leads to a lowering of moral or ethical standards of behavior and it can apply to a single individual, a group, or a whole society.
Positive growth.
Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put.
Holy shit, it’s nature!
