No one who thinks or feels deeply dreams that this happiness can be easily achieved. The consistent belief of monism in human nature can only gradually leaven life. And until then suffering will be for the majority the first result of freedom. Even for the few, to whom the relationships have already given happiness, must this be incomplete in the measure in which they feel sympathy with all the suffering about them. But above all is happiness rare because the genius for happiness is still so rare, is indeed on the whole the rarest genius. To possess it means to approach life with the humility of a beggar, but to treat it with the proud generosity of a prince; to bring to its totality the deep understanding of a great poet and to each of its moments the abandonment and ingenuousness of a child; it means to be able to enjoy wholly each present, immediate, joy and yet to be able to give up the incidental joy for the enduring one.
Happiness lies so far from man; but he must begin by daring to will it. It is this courage which Christianity broke down when it directed the soul from the earth to eternity and gave to renunciation the highest place among ethical values. Through the Revaluation of all Values, which is now going on, happiness will receive this Place.
He who contends for the deepest of all ideas, Spinosa's idea, that "Joy is perfection," contends with certainty of victory, however solitary he may stand, however much of his heart's blood may be shed in the strife.
We live still in our inmost soul only by that for which we die. And all for which we have died will live when the time shall come in which all we ourselves have suffered signifies nothing for us, yet that for which we have suffered signifies everything for others.
THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE
THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE
There are phrases which charm like a song, and one of these phrases is: "The Woman of the Future."