Suffering, sorrow, tears, regrets--these words, that vary so slightly
in meaning, are names that we give to emotions which in no two men are
alike. If we probe to the heart of these words, these emotions, we find
they are only the track that is left by our faults; and there where
these faults were noble (for there are noble faults as there are mean
or trivial virtues) our sorrow will be nearer akin to veritable
happiness than the happiness of those whose consciousness still is
confined within narrowest limits. Would Carlyle have desired to
exchange the magnificent sorrow that flooded his soul, and blossomed so
tenderly there, for the conjugal joys, superficial and sunless, of his
happiest neighbour in Chelsea? And was not Ernest Renan's grief, when
Henriette, his sister, died, more grateful to the soul than the absence
of grief in the thousands of others who have no love to give to a
sister? Shall our pity go forth to him who, at times, will weep on the
shore of an infinite sea, or to the other who smiles all his life,
without cause, alone in his little room? "Happiness, sorrow"--could we
only escape from ourselves for one instant and taste of the hero's
sadness, would there be many content to return to their own superficial
delights?
Do happiness and sorrow, then, only exist in ourselves, and that even
when they seem to come from without? All that surrounds us will turn to
angel or devil, according as our heart may be. Joan of Arc held
communion with saints, Macbeth with witches, and yet were the voices
the same. The destiny whereat we murmur may be other, perhaps, than we
think. She has only the weapons we give her; she is neither just nor
unjust, nor does it lie in her province to deliver sentence on man. She
whom we take to be goddess, is a disguised messenger only, come very
simply to warn us on certain days of our life that the hour has sounded
at last when we needs must judge ourselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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