True love is love of love; not love of the pleasures of love.
PART V.
The Consolations of Affliction.
I. The Removal of Unhappiness.
Suffer we must. No position is exempt, no foresight can avoid it. Neither the self-abnegation of asceticism nor the visions of superstition relieve from that law. The latter do but deceive and the former atrophies the soul. Far better to seek in the strength of our own minds and in the helpful sympathy of others those sources of Consolation which will enable us to bear pain and grief and disappointment, without allowing them to pass into ennui, gloom, and the distaste for life. Calm reflection, clear reasoning, and the soothing kindness of those who love us, will prepare us to meet and bear the evils of life, without having recourse to the illusions of credulity or the aridities of stoicism.
The mind can be trained to forecast the probable good and ill of its career, and thus prepare itself for even the worst of fates, without being plunged into the hopelessness of despair. We can learn to suffer, and to find even suffering
good. To a trained mind, no deprivation is an absolute misfortune.
What is more, this very training is the best of preservatives as well as the best of alleviatives; for by it we are prompted and enabled to take wise measures to avoid those evils which our forethought brings to our mind.