86. Is not the very essence of human destiny, stripped of the details that bewilder us, to be found in the most ordinary lives? The mighty struggle of morality on the heights is glorious to witness; but so will a keen observer profoundly admire a magnificent tree that stands alone in a desert, and, his contemplation over, once more go back to the forest, where there are no marvellous trees, but trees in countless abundance. The immense forest is doubtless made up of ordinary branches and stems; but is it not vast, is it not as it should be, seeing that it is the forest? Not by the exceptional shall the last word ever be spoken; and indeed what we call the sublime should be only a clearer, profounder insight into all that is perfectly normal. It is of service, often, to watch those on the peaks who do battle; but it is well, too, not to forget those in the valley below, who fight not at all. As we see all that happens to these whose life knows no struggle; as we realise how much must be conquered in us before we can rightly distinguish their narrower joys from the joy known to them who are striving on high, then perhaps does the struggle itself appear to become less important; but, for all that, we love it the more. And the reward is the sweeter to us for the silence that enwraps its coming; nor is this from a desire to keep our happiness secret--such as a crafty courtier might feel who hugs fortune's favours to him--but, perhaps, because it is only when happiness thus whispers low in our ear, and no other men know, that it is not according us joys that are filched from our brother's share. Then do we no longer say to ourselves, as we look on those brothers: "How great is the distance between such as these and myself," but in all simplicity do we murmur at last to ourselves: "The loftier my thoughts become, the less is there to divide me from the humblest of my fellow-creatures, from those who are most plentiful on earth; and every step that I take towards an uncertain ideal, is a step that brings me the nearer to those whom I once despised, in the vanity and ignorance of my earliest days."