The Pleasures of Life | Page 4

is better than what I choose." And again: "Seek not that things should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.... If you wish for anything which belongs to another, you lose that which is your own."
Few, however, if any, can I think go as far as St. Bernard. We cannot but suffer from pain, sickness, and anxiety; from the loss, the unkindness, the faults, even the coldness of those we love. How many a day has been damped and darkened by an angry word!
Hegel is said to have calmly finished his Phaenomenologie des Geistes at Jena, on the 14th October 1806, not knowing anything whatever of the battle that was raging round him.
Matthew Arnold has suggested that we might take a lesson from the heavenly bodies.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
"Bounded by themselves, and unobservant In what state God's other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life you see."
It is true that
"A man is his own star; Our acts our angels are For good or ill,"
and that "rather than follow a multitude to do evil," one should "stand like Pompey's pillar, conspicuous by oneself, and single in integrity." [6] But to many this isolation would be itself most painful, for the heart is "no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them." [7]
If we separate ourselves so much from the interests of those around us that we do not sympathize with them in their sufferings, we shut ourselves out from sharing their happiness, and lose far more than we gain. If we avoid sympathy and wrap ourselves round in a cold chain armor of selfishness, we exclude ourselves from many of the greatest and purest joys of life. To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibility of happiness.
Moreover, much of what we call evil is really good in disguise, and we should not "quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them." [8] Pleasure and pain are, as Plutarch says, the nails which fasten body and soul together. Pain is a warning of danger, a very necessity of existence. But for it, but for the warnings which our feelings give us, the very blessings by which we are surrounded would soon and inevitably prove fatal. Many of those who have not studied the question are under the impression that the more deeply-seated portions of the body must be most sensitive. The very reverse is the case. The skin is a continuous and ever-watchful sentinel, always on guard to give us notice of any approaching danger; while the flesh and inner organs, where pain would be without purpose, are, so long as they are in health, comparatively without sensation.
"We talk," says Helps, "of the origin of evil;... but what is evil? We mostly speak of sufferings and trials as good, perhaps, in their result; but we hardly admit that they may be good in themselves. Yet they are knowledge--how else to be acquired, unless by making men as gods, enabling them to understand without experience. All that men go through may be absolutely the best for them--no such thing as evil, at least in our customary meaning of the word."
Indeed, "the vale best discovereth the hill," [9] and "pour sentir les grands biens, il faut qu'il connoisse les petits maux." [10]
But even if we do not seem to get all that we should wish, many will feel, as in Leigh Hunt's beautiful translation of Filicaja's sonnet, that--
"So Providence for us, high, infinite, Makes our necessities its watchful task. Hearkens to all our prayers, helps all our wants, And e'en if it denies what seems our right, Either denies because 'twould have us ask, Or seems but to deny, and in denying grants."
Those on the other hand who do not accept the idea of continual interferences, will rejoice in the belief that on the whole the laws of the Universe work out for the general happiness.
And if it does come--
"Grief should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate, Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free: Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end." [11]
If, however, we cannot hope that life will be all happiness, we may at least secure a heavy balance on the right side; and even events which look like misfortune, if boldly faced, may often be turned to good. Oftentimes, says Seneca, "calamity turns to our advantage; and great ruins make way for greater glories." Helmholtz dates his start in science to an attack