Is there need of illusion to keep alive our desire for good? then must this desire stand confessed as foreign to the nature of man. It is a mistake to imagine that the heart will long cherish within it the ideas that reason has banished; but within the heart there is much that reason may take to itself. And at last the heart becomes the refuge to which reason is apt to fly, ever more and more simply, each time that the night steals upon it; for it is to the heart as a young, clairvoyant girl, who still at times needs advice from her blind, but smiling, mother. There comes a moment in life when moral beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as a river that seeks in vain for the sea. 75. But let us exaggerate nothing when dealing with wisdom, though it be wisdom itself. The external forces, we know, will not yield to the righteous man; but still he is absolute lord of most of the inner powers; and these are for ever spinning the web of nearly all our happiness and sorrow. We have said elsewhere that the sage, as he passes by, intervenes in countless dramas. Indeed his mere presence suffices to arrest most of the calamities that arise from error or evil. They cannot approach him, or even those who are near him. A chance meeting with creature endowed with simple and loving wisdom has stayed the hands of men who else had committed countless acts of folly or wickedness; for in life most characters are subordinate, and it is chance alone that determines whether the track which they are to follow shall be that of suffering or peace. The atmosphere around Jean-Jacques Rousseau was heavy with lamentation and treachery, delirium, deceit, and cunning; whereas Jean Paul moved in the midst of loyalty and nobility, the centre of peace and love. We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him. For indeed if our tears can flow because of our enemies' malice, it is only because we ourselves would fain make our enemies weep. If the shafts of envy can wound and draw blood, it is only because we ourselves have shafts that we wish to throw; if treachery can wring a groan from us, we must be disloyal ourselves, Only those weapons can wound the soul that it has not yet sacrificed on the altar of Love.