III. The Education of Suffering.
What is Suffering?—The Human Passion of Sorrow.—Sorrow as the Initiation into the Mysteries of Life.—The Noblest Prizes Won Only by Suffering.—It is the Highest Inspiration of Religion and Art.—It Alone Teaches the Elder Truths.—The Ministry of Grief.—The Sweetness of Departed Joys.—The Compensations of Loves that are Lost.—The Despair that is Divine.
Strowingspp. [273]-280
PART I.
Happiness as the Aim of Life.
I. Is a Guide to Happiness Possible? And, if Possible, is it Desirable?
The pursuit of happiness,—the pursuit of one’s own happiness,—is it a vain quest? and, if not vain, is it a worthy object of life?
There have been plenty to condemn it on both grounds. They have said that the endeavor is hopeless; that to study the art of being happy is like studying the art of making gold, which is the only art by which gold can never be made. Nothing, they add, is so unpropitious to happiness as the very effort to attain it.
They go farther. “Let life,” they proclaim, “have a larger purpose than enjoyment.” They quote the mighty Plato, when he demands that the right aim of living shall stand apart, and out of all relation to pleasure or pain. They declare that the theory of happiness as an end is the most dangerous of all in modern sociology—the tap-root