feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.  It demands no material space, but finds ever too narrow the spiritual fields we throw open; wherefore we must unceasingly endeavour to enlarge its territory, until such time as, soaring up on high, it finds sufficient aliment in the space which it does of itself fling open.  Then it is, and then only, that happiness truly illumines the most eternal, most human part of man; and indeed all other forms of happiness are merely unconscious fragments of this great happiness, which, as it reflects and looks before it, is conscious of no limit within itself or in all that surrounds it.

81.  This space must dwindle daily in those who follow evil, seeing that their thoughts and feelings must of necessity dwindle also.  But the man who has risen somewhat will soon forsake the ways of evil; for look deep down enough and you shall ever find its origin in straitened feeling and stunted thought.  He does evil no longer, because his thoughts are purer and higher; and now that he is incapable of evil, his thoughts will become purer still.  And thus do our thoughts and actions, having won their way into the placid heaven where no barrier restrains the soul, become as inseparable as the wings of a bird; and what to the bird was only a law of equilibrium is here transformed into a law of justice.

82.  Who can tell whether the satisfaction derived from evil can ever penetrate to the soul, unless there mingle with it a vague desire, a promise, a distant hope, of goodness or of pity?

The joy of the wretch whose victim lies in his power is perhaps unredeemed in its gloom and futility, save by the thought of mercy that flashes across him.  Evil at times would seem compelled to beg a ray of light from virtue, to shed lustre on its triumph.  Is it possible for a man to smile in his hatred and not borrow the smile of love?  But the smile will be short-lived, for here, as everywhere, there is no inner injustice.  Within the soul the high-water mark of happiness is always level with that of justice or charity—­which words I use here indifferently, for indeed what is charity or love but justice with naught to do but count its jewels?  The man who goes forth to seek his happiness in evil does merely prove thereby that he is less happy than the other who watches, and disapproves.  And yet his object is identical with that of the upright man.  He too is in search of happiness, of some sort of peace and certainty.  Of what avail to punish him?  We do not blame the poor because their home is not a palace; it is sad enough to be compelled to live in a hovel.  He whose eyes can see the invisible, knows that in the soul of the most unjust man there is justice still:  justice, with all her attributes, her stainless garments and holy activity.  He knows that the soul of the sinner is ever balancing peace and love, and the consciousness of life, no less scrupulously than the soul of philosopher, saint, or hero; that