=160. Patience.=--One of the most difficult forms of courage is that which consists not only in braving or repelling a threatening danger (which presupposes some effort and activity), but in bearing without anger, without any sign of vain revolt, the ills and pains of life: this is _patience_. There is a kind of patience which is but a part of our duty in regard to others: one must learn to bear a great deal from others, they having often a great deal to bear from us. But we speak here of that inner patience which is our strength in grief; the patience of the invalid in his daily sufferings; that of the poor man in his poverty; the patience, in short, which all must exercise amidst the innumerable and inevitable accidents of life. It is, above all, that sort of virtue which the Stoics meant when they said with Epictetus: "You should not wish things to happen as you want them; but you should wish them as they do happen." A maxim which Descartes translated substantially, saying: "My maxim is rather to try to overcome myself than fortune, and rather to change my own wishes than to change the order of the world." Which he explained by saying: "If we regard the goods which lie outside of us as unattainable as those we are deprived of from our birth, we shall no more grieve at not possessing them, than we should in not possessing the empires of China or Mexico; and, making, as it is said, a virtue of necessity, we shall not any more desire to be healthy when ill, or to be free when in prison, than we desire now to have bodies of as incorruptible a stuff as diamonds, or to have wings to fly with like birds."[126] It is this kind of courage which at every moment of life is most in requisition, and which is the rarest; for there will be found plenty of men capable of braving death when the occasion presents itself; but to bear with resignation the inevitable and constantly renewed ills of human life, is a virtue all the more rare as one is scarcely ever ashamed of its opposite vice. One would blush to fear peril, one does not blush for rebelling against destiny; one is willing to die if necessary, but not to be thwarted. Yet will it be admitted that to succumb under the weight of destiny, is a kind of cowardice. It is for this reason that it would be justly said that suicide is also a cowardly act; for whilst it is true that it demands a certain physical courage, it is also true that the moral courage which bears the ills of life is of a still higher order.