Who would wish to associate himself with our weaknesses, our shames, our jealousies, our betrayals? Who can feel sympathy for a grief that disavows everything pure and generous that exists in us? No mention is made of these griefs in the Beatitudes. Christ himself might ask us to kiss the face of a leper. But what charity could so sacrifice itself as to embrace our shame and our degradation? That is the cup we must put away from our lips. V The stoics pursue their strange happiness with an impassibility that is worse than death. Epictetus writes: “If you love an earthen vessel, tell yourself that you love an earthen vessel, for then if that vessel is broken you will not be troubled by it. If you love your son or your wife, tell yourself that you love a mortal being, for then if that being chance to die you will not be troubled by it.” Comes our wisdom at such a price? If so, I renounce and abhor it. Better trouble and sorrow than this inhuman serenity! Certainly I willingly renounce the earthen vessel; the sound of its breaking will never be loud enough to interrupt the conversation our souls pursue. But those dear faces that are my horizon, my heaven and my homeland, can I think without anguish of losing them forever? How irreparably I should despise myself if, on that condition, I succeeded in winning my own salvation! This philosophy is poor, forsaken, desperate, rather than truly wise. It renounces, by degrees, everything, for the sake of an ironical peace. It withdraws from life the least debatable motives for continuing it. It seeks to close the heart to sorrow. But since that remains inevitable, it is better to love it, better to make an ally of it, better to conquer it by main strength and possess it intimately. Dryness of heart cannot be a good thing. What, is everything to be taken away from me, even my grief, even that grief which remains to us when all other blessings have been ravished away? The resources of philosophy are poor and destitute unless the heart can anoint them, sanctify them, and invest them with its own supreme authority. VI The fanaticism of grief is a fact so profoundly human that religions and governments have exploited it successfully. This almost mystical passion flourishes so well among peoples that are permeated with the ancient traditions of suffering and renunciation! Nevertheless, the path does not lie through this sublime error, which is altogether too favorable for the enterprises of criminal ambition.