But at the first setting out upon this later stage I had still mistakes to make, and the ascent to tranquillity was not to be accomplished without stumbling. It was the old Roman creed which first drew me away from fretting memories; in its high restraint, as of a hushed yet mighty wind, it breathed a power of valiant endurance, and promised before nightfall the respite of a twilight hour. For stoicism has qualities which seem foreordained for the bracing of shy souls, as if the men who framed its austere laws had prescience of our frailty and consciously legislated to its intention. It is the philosophy of the individual standing by himself, as the shy must always stand, over against a world which he likes not but may not altogether shun. And in this proud estrangement it promises release from all the inquisition of morbid fears, and an imperturbable calm above the need of earthly friends or comfort or happiness; it plants the feet upon that path of nature along which a man may go strongly, consoled in solitude by a god-like sense of self-reliance. This immutable confidence is the essential power of stoicism, which does not, like the great oriental religions, tame personality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance, its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is medical to their timidity. And so in the hour of my bereavement its voice inspired to resistance like a bugle sounding the advance; its echoes rang with the assurance that man was not made to be the worm of Eden, darkly creeping in the dust, but rather its noblest creature, with the light crowning his head and the winds tossing his hair. And then its strong simplicity, so masculine and unemotional, was grateful to one now finally dismated, and so cruelly handled as to have, it seemed, no use for a heart any more. Better let feeling die than be betrayed by diffidence into the denial of its true allegiance, or into expressions of the inner life false and wry as the strange laughter which the doomed suitors in Ithaca could not control. Though it stifled feeling, the creed of Cleanthes exalted the intellect, which was all that now remained to me unimpaired; surely it was the appointed rule for one henceforth to be severed from the passions and enthusiasms through which humanity errs and is happy.