Remember, too, that certain women never capitulate twice: they never forgive themselves for having yielded completely even for a moment. The same thing is true with others who are offended with you because you have “taken” them by force. Do not regret this sacrifice too much: it leaves a beautiful jewel in your casket. Truly the whole vast race of men belongs to you. Take and eat, you cannot find more noble food. See, there is the world you must conquer. It is not that for whose possession proud peoples are driven to declare war; it is indeed quite another world than that which Satan showed Jesus from the summit of the mountain. IV ON DISCOVERING THE WORLD I The world contains not one single object that might not be a source of happiness. Sorrow springs from this, that man outdoes himself in misusing everything. He turns against his own body or his own spirit all sorts of things that seem well made for his joy. Every being contains an unbelievable store of happiness, and this one virtue reveals the angle from which he ought to be judged. Your true business man makes a practice of weighing everything in terms of gold: a human being, a field of wheat, a beam, a precious stone. His tables of value are false, but the principle of valuation remains none the less efficacious, fundamental. The mistake of these persons is in testing everything by a single measure, in reducing everything to this gold which enables them to seek their chosen pleasure. If it is drink, or woman, they transmute an orchard into wine or into women, losing terribly by the exchange. They thus produce a sort of analogy to what the physicists call the degradation of energy: little by little, the traffickers degrade their pleasures until they obtain those they prefer. But happiness is higher than this: it cannot be degraded, bought, transmuted. It is a pure relationship between the soul and the world. It will never be the mere object of a transaction. Many are the men who have fastened their hope, their future upon the acquisition of some material good only to experience after years of effort and privation a burning disillusion. That is because happiness is too proud and free a thing to obey the commands of merchants. It follows laws of its own that seem like inspirations, it does not come at the bidding of business men. The castle we have coveted so long may open at the appointed hour; joy will not take up its abode there unless we have deserved it. It must be repeated again: the principle of evaluation is at the base of our moral life. But each thing should be valued in itself and for itself. A tuft of violets is worth a great deal for its perfume and its beauty, it can bring joy or consolation to a great many hearts. But it has only the slightest commercial value; estimated in terms of building lumber or freestone it signifies nothing, or virtually nothing.