Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. VIT. of Final Perseverance. 181
present sensation, if the sensation has been, there has been
happiness. The fact has already taken place, then, before
it cannot
the end comes ; and whatever that end may be,
cause what has taken place not to have. A man therefore
who has had uninterrupted happiness up to the end of his
life, but has then fallen into misfortune, has undoubtedly
had more happiness than one who has been miserable up
to the end of his life, but has then become prosperous.
Solon s assertion applies properly not to the state and con
dition of the persons themselves, but to their position in
the minds of the survivors ; for we naturally think of a
man afterwards as we last knew him. However pros
perous, therefore, a man has been up to the end, if at the
end he falls, then, inasmuch as that is the last we saw of
him, and he disappeared from that time, and was no more
seen, we carry his image in our minds connected with this
fall and adversity. If the melancholy association is the
last in order, it cannot be corrected, but is fixed and un
changing ; and the same is true of the contrary one. It
was a natural law of association, then, which the philoso
pher observed, of which this was the result. When he
said that a man s happiness in life was decided by its end,
that end was imagined as still going on it was not the
;
real termination of life but an ideal continuation of it, and,
as being ideal, unending, for we can always summon the
idea. The two young men who, after their work of piety
in drawing their sacred mother to the temple, fell asleep
in the holy precincts and died, enjoy an eternal rest in
OUT minds. Their sweet and blissful repose still in idea
goes on. And so the other who died in victory fighting
for his country enjoys an eternal transport in our minds.
The image of repose, and the image of glory stay for ever.
Such an ideal end of life, were it real, would indeed be the
test of a man s happiness in life ; because the eternal con
tinuation of a life is the greater portion of it, and the
of the life
happiness of the greater portion is the happiness
as a whole. But the literal end of life is no such test.
But a test which is deceptive as applied to the estima
tion of a man s happiness is true as applied to the estimation