Viva muchos a?os! is the ordinary greeting in Spain, and it is usual throughout the whole world to wish people a long life. It is not a knowledge of what life is that explains the origin of such a wish, but rather knowledge of what man is in his real nature: namely, the will to live.
The wish which every one has, that he may be remembered after his death, and which those people with aspirations have for posthumous fame, seems to me to arise from this tenacity to life. When they see themselves cut off from every possibility of real existence they struggle after a life which is still within their reach, even if it is only an ideal—that is to say, an unreal one.
We wish, more or less, to get to the end of everything we are interested in or occupied with; we are impatient to get to the end of it, and glad when it is finished. It is only the general end, the end of all ends, that we wish, as a rule, as far off as possible.
Every separation gives a foretaste of death, and every meeting a foretaste of the resurrection. This explains why even people who were indifferent to each other, rejoice so much when they meet again after the lapse of twenty or thirty years.
The deep sorrow we feel on the death of a friend springs from the feeling that in every individual there is a something which we cannot define, which is his alone and therefore irreparable. Omne individuum ineffabile. The same applies to individual animals. A man who has by accident fatally wounded a favourite animal feels the most acute sorrow, and the animal's dying look causes him infinite pain.
It is possible for us to grieve over the death of our enemies and adversaries, even after the lapse of a long time, almost as much as over the death of our friends—that is to say, if we miss them as witnesses of our brilliant success.