Pain is more natural to us than pleasure. We bear it better. Bad fortune is easier sustained than good. The hour of prosperity is more trying than that of adversity. These are commonplaces, and speak for the universal recognition of this feature of mind. * * * * * Our first language is wailing, and our most hilarious laughter brings tears. * * * * * Do you say that had the Creative Hand been yours, pain would not have been in the world? Compel my belief in your words by seeing you relieve all pain now in your power to relieve. * * * * * The abrupt ending of any deep emotion is unpleasant, even though a sad one. When we have been sailing in the clouds, the descent to earth is always a shock. * * * * * Any action, however trifling, assumes an immeasurable significance when we know it is performed for the last time. It evokes the idea of the Irrevocable and the Infinite, of Death and Destiny. Our souls hear the distant dirge, _Vale, vale, eternumque vale_. * * * * * We can always explain our merriment, but often not our melancholy. Glee is concrete and affirmative; dejection is vague and negative; and the negative is unlimited. * * * * * The drama of life is a tragedy, for its last scene is always that of the death of the title-role. We take the greatest interest in the spectacle, but rarely care to remember the denouement. * * * * * If you love life so much, why complain of ennui? There is nothing like it for lengthening the hours, and thus giving you longer to live. * * * * * The more pleasant the moments, the swifter they fly. Perfect happiness would destroy Time. * * * * * Many pleasures, like Barbary figs, are gathered at the cost of bleeding fingers. III. _The Education of Suffering._ What is suffering? What is sorrow? Nought but the wounds in our conflict with the imperfections and limitations of life, with the elements of death and annihilation, with the powers of falsehood and hatred. The inappeasable thirst in the human heart for the fullness of existence, for complete happiness, could only be satisfied with all love and all truth, and we should need the term of all time in which to attain them. Pain and grief are, therefore, evident proofs of the capacity for broader conditions of being; and at the same time they are the guides, pointing out what to avoid and what to seek, in order to attain this end of all desire. This is true of all organic existence; but man alone is capable of Sorrow, a passion allied to the most exalted moods of mind, presenting to it the image of infinity, defining and educating his desires by the clear exhibition of their painful limitations, and thus revealing to his perceptions new though arduous paths, which will lead him to a loftier evolution and broader horizons.