If endeavor should stimulate us, pain ought not to crush us. But do we not resist it less well nowadays? Physical pain, more especially, has become unbearable to us. We need sedatives for the smallest ailments, and we are sure that our candor will be applauded if we declare that violent toothache is more painful than any moral pain. Moral pain is the indispensable complement of human life. Before suffering comes, life does not appear in its true colors, and the weak are not always distinguishable from the strong. “The woods, cut down, more fair and green shall grow,” said old Ronsard. After all, life has its revenges. Even if it had not, we still ought not to be discouraged. Many faces turn away from failure and resent defeat, even in the case of others. That again is fear. One day a professor of literature, not devoid of irony, having finished a course of lectures on the “Iliad” to a class of young girls, asked his pupils which hero they preferred, Achilles or Hector. Achilles had an overwhelming majority. He was the conqueror. But Homer, more clear-sighted in his psychology, gave the conquered hero the nobler and more generous character, for he knew the share that the gods have in the success or failure of mankind. Our finest French epic, the “Chanson de Roland,” exalts courage under defeat. Energy fits us to bear failure, pain, and effort. This fine quality needs discipline. Its character depends on the use that is made of it. To cultivate it for itself would be to imitate those people who make sport the aim of their existence. Sport maintains or increases our strength and our health, of which we have need in order to realise our life; but to take them for the actual realisation of life would only be grotesque. Nature develops itself blindly and lavishly. Everything pertaining to the human sphere is subject to order. And, just as no work of art can be produced without submission to the laws of harmony, so there is no fine life without the acceptance of an order conditioned by our dependence and our limitations. But to regulate our energy is not to diminish it. On the contrary, it is to possess and manage it as a horseman his well-trained horse. “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence,” says the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, “and the violent take it by force.” Life itself suffers violence. The lukewarm and moderate natures have never created anything; the creative are the passionate ones who have tamed their passions. In order to live all our life, it is important to accept it in the past, the present, and the future as well. In the past, this means to recognise a tradition. Neither nations nor individuals appear suddenly in the light of day. We must therefore recognise the ties which bind us to the country where we were born, to the race from which we have sprung. Thus we shall extend ourselves backwards and take to ourselves whatever there is, in the past, that still has life.