"Nullum sine auctoramento malum est."

["No evil is without its compensation."--Seneca, Ep., 69.]

When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be
desired (let us put the case that all his members were always seized with
a pleasure like that of generation, in its most excessive height) I feel
him melting under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly unable
to support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. Indeed,
he is running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste to
escape, as from a place where he cannot stand firm, and where he is
afraid of sinking.

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue
I have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in
his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and loyal a lover of virtue of
that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear
close to himself and he did so no doubt--would have heard some jarring
note of human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is
wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice
themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that
Plato says, they undertake to cut off the hydra's head, who pretend to
clear the law of all inconveniences:

"Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo,
quod contra singulos utilitate publics rependitur,"

["Every great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which
recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility."
--Annals, xiv. 44.]