Then, when we come to man, we find that he has more strength than weakness, more health than sickness, more power than inability, else man had not survived the ages. Moreover, man must have more capacity for enjoyment than for sorrow, else he would abandon life in weariness, or at best he would forget how to laugh; the mere animal does not laugh, that is one of man’s accomplishments.
Man has also more desire for knowledge than for ease, else he would never have penetrated into the secrets and mysteries of Nature; man’s strong aspirations surmount his groveling tendencies, else he had never come up out of savagery into the light and development of kinship with the high gods.
Then, why should we give way to repining? All things point to the apostolic truth that “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” And always the morning comes. Moreover, the darkest night is seldom starless if we look up intently enough. If we blind our eyes with tears, we cannot see the light even when the horizon is rosy with the rising sun. Better by far is it to feel with Browning:
“How good is man’s life,
The mere living! How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy.”
CHAPTER L
ILL SUCCESS
“And comfortress of Unsuccess