be decisive, since he himself continues to live?  The thought must be incomplete surely whose object is not to console.  It is easier for you to tell me the cause of your sorrow than, very simply, to speak of the deeper, the weightier reasons that induce your instinct to cling to this life whose distress you bemoan.  Which of us finds not, unsought, many thousands of reasons for sorrow?  It is doubtless of service that the sage should point out those that are loftiest, for the loftiest reasons for sorrow must be on the eve of becoming reasons for gladness and joy.  But reasons that have not within them these germs of greatness and happiness—­and in moral life open spaces abound where greatness and happiness blend—­these are surely not worthy of mention.  Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others.  If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy.  “It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad,” said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages.  But are we not saddening ourselves, and learning to sadden others, if we refuse to accept all the happiness offered to man?

59.  The humble thought that connects a mere satisfied glance, an ordinary, everyday act of simple kindness, or an insignificant moment of happiness, with something eternal, and stable, and beautiful, is of far greater value, and infinitely nearer to the mystery of life, than the grand and gloomy meditation wherein sorrow, love, and despair blend with death and destiny and the apathetic forces of nature.  Appearances often deceive us.  Hamlet, bewailing his fate on the brink of the gulf, seems profounder, imbued with more passion, than Antoninus Pius, whose tranquil gaze rests on the self-same forces, but who accepts them and questions them calmly, instead of recoiling in horror and calling down curses upon them.  Our slightest gesture at nightfall seems more momentous by far than all we have done in the day; but man was created to work in the light, and not to burrow in darkness.

60.  The smallest consoling idea has a strength of its own that is not to be found in the most magnificent plaint, the most exquisite expression of sorrow.  The vast, profound thought that brings with it nothing but sadness is energy burning its wings in the darkness to throw light on the walls of its prison; but the timidest thought of hope, or of cheerful acceptance of inevitable law, in itself already is action in search of a foothold wherefrom to take flight into life.  It cannot be harmful for us to acknowledge at times that action begins with reality only, though our thoughts be never so large and disinterested and admirable in themselves.  ’For all that goes to build up what is truly our destiny is contained in those of our thoughts which, hurried along by the