Let us not charge that man with weakness who, when on the eve of departure for distant and untravelled countries, is perceived to impart the intonation and tenderness of sorrow to his adieus. Ought we to exact more of him whom death is about to conduct to that ‘undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns?’ I would not seem to affect an austere and unnatural courage. But whenever delivered from the only heart-rending agony, I will hope and strive to preserve sufficient tranquillity of mind to impress the sentiment on those I love, that we ought, with becoming dignity, to submit ourselves to the immutable laws of nature; that complaint is useless, and murmuring unjust; and that it becomes us, with transient but subdued emotion, to say, as we receive the final embrace, ‘may we meet again!’ LETTER XXV. CONCLUSION OF ‘DROZ SUR L’ART D’ETRE HEUREUX.’ I shall have attained my purpose if these sketches should produce any degree of conviction that man, in exercising his faculties, can mitigate his pains and multiply his pleasures, and, consequently, should serve as the outlines of a plan for reducing the pursuit of happiness to an art. I am aware that no view could be offered more contrary to the prevalent opinions in society. The morose and the frivolous make common cause to attack it. To them the very idea seems absurd; and the most indulgent among them question the good faith of him who announces it.[62] To such grave and learned authorities, and more, even to the general suffrage against it, I might dare to oppose counterbalancing authorities. From Socrates to Franklin, I see philosophers who have been persuaded that man may be directed in the art, and instructed in the science of happiness; and that his faculties may be enlarged to pursue it. Who are the men that have entertained this persuasion? The very _elite_ of the human race. Was each individual of them surrounded by those happy circumstances which would naturally inspire the same philosophy? They were persons who had experienced all the conditions of life. As if nature had studied to prove, by great examples, that our happiness depends upon our reason more than upon our circumstances, Epictetus lived in chains, and Marcus Aurelius on a throne. We justly render homage to the Greek philosophers. Is their glory founded on their physics, long since known to be full of errors, or their metaphysics, often puerile? Upon neither; but they have merited the veneration of ages by indicating principles, the practice of which, would render us better and more happy.