Chapter 5

37. And thus are we truly saving a man if we bring about that he loves evil somewhat less than he loved it before; for we are helping that man to construct, deep down in his soul, the refuge where--against destiny shall brandish her weapons in vain. This refuge is the monument of consciousness, or, it may be, of love; for love is nothing but consciousness, still vaguely in search of itself; and veritable consciousness nothing but love that at last has emerged from the shadow. And it is in the deepest recess of this refuge that the soul shall kindle the wondrous fire of her joy. And this joy of the soul is like unto no other joy; and even as material fire will chase away deadly disease from the earth, so will the joy of the soul scatter sorrow that malevolent destiny brings. It arises not from exterior happiness; it arises not from satisfied self-love; for the joy that self-love procures becomes less as the soul becomes nobler, but the joy of pure love increases as nobility comes to the soul. Nor is this joy born of pride; for to be able to smile at its beauty is not enough to bring joy to the soul. The soul that has sought in itself has the right to know of its beauty; but to brood on this beauty too much, to become over-conscious thereof, were perhaps to detract somewhat from the unconsciousness of its love. The joy that I speak of takes not from love what it adds unto consciousness; for in this joy, and in this joy alone, do consciousness and love become one, feeding each on the other, each gaining from that which it gives. The striving intellect may well know happiness beyond the reach of the satisfied body; but the soul that grows nobler has joys that are often denied to the striving intellect. These two will often unite and labour together at building the house within. But still it will happen at times that both work apart, and widely different then are the structures each will erect. And were this to be so, and the being I loved best of all in the world came and asked me which he should choose--which refuge I held to be most unattackable, sweetest, profoundest--I would surely advise him to shelter his destiny in the refuge of the soul that grows nobler.

38. Is the sage never to suffer? Shall no storm ever break on the roof of his dwelling, no traps be laid to ensnare him? Shall wife and friends never fail him? Must his father not die, and his mother, his brothers, his sons--must all these not die like the rest? Shall angels stand guard at each highway through which sorrow can pass into man? Did not Christ Himself weep as He stood before Lazarus' tomb? Had not Marcus Aurelius to suffer--from Commodus, the son who already showed signs of the monster he was to become; from Faustina, the wife whom he loved, but who cared not for him? Was not destiny's hand laid heavy on Paulus Aemilius, who was fully as wise as Timoleon? did not both his sons die, one five days before his triumph in Rome, and the other but three days after? What becomes of the refuge, then, where wisdom keeps watch over happiness? Must we take back all we have said? and is wisdom yet one more illusion, by whose aid the soul would fain conciliate reason, and justify cravings that experience is sure to reject as being opposed to reason?

39. Nay, In truth, the sage too must suffer. He suffers; and suffering forms a constituent part of his wisdom. He will suffer, perhaps, more than most men, for that his nature is far more complete. And being nearer to all mankind, as the wise ever must be, his suffering will be but the greater, for the sorrows of others are his. He will suffer in his flesh, in his heart, in his spirit; for there are sides in all these that no wisdom on earth can dispute against destiny. And so he accepts his suffering, but is not discouraged thereby; not for him are the chains that it fastens on those who cringe down before it, unaware that it is but a messenger sent by a mightier personage, whom a bend in the road hides from view. Needs must the sage, like his neighbour, be startled from sleep by the shouts of the truculent envoy, by the blows at the door that cause the whole house to tremble. He, too, must go down and parley. But yet, as he listens, his eyes are not fixed on this bringer of evil tidings; his glance will at times be lifted over the messenger's shoulder, will scan the dust on the horizon in search of the mighty idea that perhaps may be near at hand. And indeed, when our thoughts rest on fate, at such times as happiness enfolds us, we feel that no great misfortune can be suddenly burst upon us. The proportions will change, it is true, when the blow falls; but it is equally true that before the misfortune can wholly destroy the abiding courage within us, it first must triumph in our heart over all we adore, over all we admire, and love. And what alien power can expel from our soul a feeling and thought that we hurl not our selves from its throne? Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts; and whence do our thoughts derive the weapons wherewith they attack or defend us? We suffer but little from suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming sorrow may spring. "His unhappiness was caused by himself," said a thinker of one whose eyes never looked over the brutal messenger's shoulder--"his unhappiness was caused by himself; for all misery is inward, and caused by ourselves. We are wrong in believing that it comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very substance."

40. It is only in the manner of our facing the event that its active force consists. Assemble ten men who, like Paulus Aemilius, have lost both their sons at the moment when life seemed sweetest, then will the misfortune appear to vary in every one. Misfortune enters within us, but must of necessity yield obedience to all our commands. Even as the order may be that it finds inscribed on the threshold, so will it sow, or destroy, or reap. If my neighbour, a commonplace man, were to lose his two sons at the moment when fate had granted his dearest desires, then would darkness steal over all, unrelieved by a glimmer of light; and misfortune itself, contemptuous of its too facile success, would leave naught behind but a handful of colourless cinders. Nor is it necessary for me to see my neighbour again to be aware that his sorrow will have brought to him pettiness only; for sorrow does merely restore to us that which our soul had lent in happier days.

41. But this was the misfortune that befell Paulus Aemilius. Rome, still aglow with his triumph, waited, dismayed, wondering what was to happen. Were the gods defying the sage, and how would the sage reply? Would the hero be crushed by his sorrow, or would sorrow acknowledge its master? Mankind, at moments like these, seems aware that destiny is yet once again making trial of the strength of her arm, and that change of some kind must befall if her blow crush not where it alights. And see with what eagerness men at such moments will question the eyes of their chiefs for the password against the invisible.

But Paulus Aemilius has gathered together an assembly of the people of Rome; he advances gravely towards them, and thus does he speak: "I, who never yet feared anything that was human, have, amongst such as were divine, always had, a dread of fortune as faithless and inconstant; and, for the very reason that in this war she had been as a favourable gale in all my affairs, I still expected some change and reflux of things. In one day I passed the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from Brundisium; thence in five more I sacrificed at Delphi, and in other five days came to my forces in Macedonia, where, after I had finished the usual sacrifices for the purifying of the army, I entered on my duties, and in the space of fifteen days put an honourable period to the war. Still retaining a jealousy of fortune, even from the smooth current of my affairs, and seeing myself secure and free from the danger of any enemy, I chiefly dreaded the change of the goddess at sea, whilst conveying home my victorious army, vast spoils, and a captive king. Nay, indeed, after I was returned to you safe, and saw the city full of joy, congratulating, and sacrifices, yet still I distrusted, well knowing that fortune never conferred any great benefits that were unmixed and unattended with probabilities of reverse. Nor could my mind, that was still as it were in labour, and always foreseeing something to befall this city, free itself from this fear, until this great misfortune befell me in my own family, and till, in the midst of those days set apart for triumph, I carried two of the best of sons, my only destined successors, one after another to their funerals. Now therefore, I am myself safe from danger, at least as to what was my greatest care; and I trust and am verily persuaded that, for the time to come, fortune will prove constant and harmless unto you; since she has sufficiently wreaked her jealousy at our great successes on me and mine, and has made the conqueror as marked an example of human instability as the captive whom he led in triumph, with this only difference, that Perseus, though conquered, does yet enjoy his children, while the conqueror Aemilius is deprived of his."

42. This was the Roman fashion of accepting the greatest sorrow that can befall a man at the moment when sorrow is felt the most keenly--at the moment of his greatest happiness. And there are many ways of accepting misfortune--as many, indeed, as there are generous feelings or thoughts to be found on the earth; and every one of those thoughts, every one of those feelings, has a magic wand that transforms, on the threshold, the features and vestments of sorrow. Job would have said, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord"; and Marcus Aurelius perhaps, "If it be no longer allowed me to love those I loved high above all, it is doubtless that I may learn to love those whom I love not yet."

43. And let us not think that these are mere empty words wherewith they console themselves, words that in vain seek to hide the wound that bleeds but the more for the effort. But if it were so, if empty words could console, that surely were better than to be bereft of all consolation. And further, if we have to admit that all this is illusion, must we not, in mere justice, also admit that illusion is the solitary thing that the soul can possess; and in the name of what other illusion shall we venture to rate this illusion so lightly? Ah, when the night falls and the great sages I speak of go back to their lonely dwelling, and look on the chairs round the hearth where their children once were, but never shall be again--then, truly, can they not escape some part of the sorrow that comes, overwhelming, to those whose suffering no noble thought chastens. For it were wrong to attribute to beautiful feeling and thought a virtue they do not possess. There are, external tears that they cannot restrain; there are holy hours when wisdom cannot yet console. But, for the last time let us say it, suffering we cannot avoid for suffering there ever must be; still does it rest with ourselves to choose what our suffering shall bring. And let us not think that this choice, which the eye cannot see, is truly a very small matter, and helpless to comfort a sorrow whose cause the eyes never cease to behold. Out of small matters like these are all moral joys built up, and these are profounder far than intellectual or physical joys. Translate into words the feeling that spurs on the hero, and how trivial it seems! Insignificant too does the idea of duty appear that Cato the younger had formed, when compared with the enormous disturbance it caused in a mighty empire, or the terrible death it brought on. And yet, was not Cato's idea far greater than the disturbance, or death, that ensued? Do we not feel, even now, that Cato was right? And was not his life rendered truly and nobly happy, thanks to this very idea, that the reason of man will not even consider, so unreasonable does it appear? All that ennobles our life, all that we respect in ourselves, the mainsprings of our virtue, the limits that feeling will even impose upon vices or crimes--all these appear veriest trifles when viewed by the cold eye of reason; and yet do they fashion the laws that govern every man's life. Would life be endurable if we did not obey many truths that our reason rejects? The wretchedest even obeys one of these; and the more truths there are that he yields to, the less wretched does he become. The assassin will tell you, "I murder, it is true, but at least do not steal." And he who has stolen steals, but does not betray; and he who betrays would at least not betray his brother. And thus does each one cling for refuge to his last fragment of spiritual beauty. No man can have fallen so low but he still has a retreat in his soul, where he ever shall find a few drops of pure water, and be girt up anew with the strength that he needs to go on with his life. For here again reason is helpless, unable to comfort; she must halt on the threshold of the thief's last asylum, even as she must halt on the threshold of Job's resignation, of the love of Marcus Aurelius, of the sacrifice made by Antigone. She halts, is bewildered, she does not approve; and yet knows full well that to rise in revolt were only to combat the light whereof she is shadow; for amidst all this she is but as one who stands with the sun full upon him. His shadow is there at his feet; as he moves, it will follow; as he rises or stoops, its outline will alter; but this shadow is all he commands, that he masters, possesses, of the dazzling light that enfolds him. And so has reason her being, too, beneath a superior light, and the shadow cannot affect the calm, unvarying splendour. Far distant as Marcus Aurelius may be from the traitor, it is still from the selfsame well that they both draw the holy water that freshens their soul; and this well is not to be found in the intellect. For, strangely enough, it is not in our reason that moral life has its being; and he who would let reason govern his life would be the most wretched of men. There is not a virtue, a beautiful thought, or a generous deed, but has most of its roots hidden far away from that which can be understood or explained. Well might man be proud could he trace every virtue, and joy, and his whole inward life, to the one thing he truly possesses, the one thing on which he can depend--in a word, to his reason. But do what he will, the smallest event that arrives will quickly convince him that reason is wholly unable to offer him shelter; for in truth we are beings quite other than merely reasonable creatures.

44. But if it be not our reason that chooses what suffering shall bring us, whereby is the choice then made? By the life we have lived till then, the life that has moulded our soul. Wisdom matures but slowly; her fruits shall not quickly be gathered. If my life has not been as that of Paulus Aemilius, there shall be no comfort for me in the thoughts whereby he was consoled, not though every sage in the world were to come and repeat them to me. The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought--above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune. When Thomas Carlyle (a sage, although somewhat morbid) lost the wife he had tenderly loved, with whom he had lived forty years, then did his sorrow too, with marvellous exactness, become as had been the bygone life of his love. And therefore was this sorrow of his majestic and vast; consoling and torturing alike in the midst of his self-reproach, his regret, and his tenderness--as might be meditation or prayer on the shore of a gloomy sea. In the sorrow that floods our heart we have, as it were, a synthetic presentment of all the days that are gone; and as these were, so shall our sorrow be poignant, or tender and gentle. If there be in my life no noble or generous deeds that memory can bring back to me, then, at the inevitable moment when memory melts into tears, must these tears, too, be bereft of all that is generous or noble. For tears in themselves have no colour, that they may the better reflect the past life of our soul; and this reflection becomes our chastisement or our reward. There is but one thing that never can turn into suffering, and that is the good we have done. When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone, there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our recollections of veritable love--which indeed is the act of virtue containing all others--call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born. Sorrow is just, above all; and even as the cast stands ready awaiting the molten bronze, so is our whole life expectant of the hour of sorrow, for it is then we receive our wage.

45. Here, standing close to the mightiest pillar of destiny's throne, we may see once again how restricted her power becomes on such as surpass her in wisdom. For she is barbarian still, and many men tower above her. The commonplace life still supplies her with weapons, which today are old-fashioned and crude. Her mode of attack, in exterior life, is as it always has been, as it was in Oedipus' days. She shoots like a blear-eyed bow-man, aiming straight ahead of her; but if the target be raised somewhat higher than usual, her arrows fall harmless to earth.

Suffering, sorrow, tears, regrets--these words, that vary so slightly in meaning, are names that we give to emotions which in no two men are alike. If we probe to the heart of these words, these emotions, we find they are only the track that is left by our faults; and there where these faults were noble (for there are noble faults as there are mean or trivial virtues) our sorrow will be nearer akin to veritable happiness than the happiness of those whose consciousness still is confined within narrowest limits. Would Carlyle have desired to exchange the magnificent sorrow that flooded his soul, and blossomed so tenderly there, for the conjugal joys, superficial and sunless, of his happiest neighbour in Chelsea? And was not Ernest Renan's grief, when Henriette, his sister, died, more grateful to the soul than the absence of grief in the thousands of others who have no love to give to a sister? Shall our pity go forth to him who, at times, will weep on the shore of an infinite sea, or to the other who smiles all his life, without cause, alone in his little room? "Happiness, sorrow"--could we only escape from ourselves for one instant and taste of the hero's sadness, would there be many content to return to their own superficial delights?

Do happiness and sorrow, then, only exist in ourselves, and that even when they seem to come from without? All that surrounds us will turn to angel or devil, according as our heart may be. Joan of Arc held communion with saints, Macbeth with witches, and yet were the voices the same. The destiny whereat we murmur may be other, perhaps, than we think. She has only the weapons we give her; she is neither just nor unjust, nor does it lie in her province to deliver sentence on man. She whom we take to be goddess, is a disguised messenger only, come very simply to warn us on certain days of our life that the hour has sounded at last when we needs must judge ourselves.

46. Men of inferior degree, it is true, are not given to judging themselves, and therefore is it that fate passes judgment upon them. They are the slaves of a destiny of almost unvarying sternness, for it is only when man has been judged by himself that destiny can be transformed. Men such as these will not master, or alter within them, the event that they meet; nay, they themselves become morally transformed by the very first thing that draws near them. If misfortune befall them, they grovel before it and stoop down to its level; and misfortune, with them, would seem always to wear its poorest and commonest aspect. They see the finger of fate in every least thing that may happen--be it choice of profession, a friendship that greets them, a woman who passes, and smiles. To them chance and destiny always are one; but chance will be seldom propitious if accepted as destiny. Hostile forces at once take possession of all that is vacant within us, nor filled by the strength of our soul; and whatever is void in the heart or the mind becomes a fountain of fatal influence. The Margaret of Goethe and Ophelia of Shakespeare had perforce to yield meekly to fate, for they were so feeble that each gesture they witnessed seemed fate's own gesture to them. But yet, had they only possessed some fragment of Antigone's strength--the Antigone of Sophocles--would they not then have transformed the destinies of Hamlet and Faust as well as their own? And if Othello had taken Corneille's Pauline to wife and not Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality lurked? And though the body may often be powerless to add to its strength, can this ever be true of the soul? Indeed, the more that we think of it, the clearer does it become that there could be one destiny only that might truly be said to triumph over man, the one that might have the power loudly to cry unto all, "From this day onward there shall come no more strength to thy soul, neither strength nor ennoblement." But is there a destiny in the world empowered to hold such language?