most desperate hour of gambler, plotter, or lover.  God alone can tell how much energy is consumed in the triumphs we achieve over men, and things, and ourselves.  We may not be always aware whither our steps are leading, but are only too fully conscious of the wearisomeness of the Journey.  And yet—­if the historian may be permitted to lay aside, for one moment, the story he is telling, and to assume the role of the critic—­as you cast your eyes on the lives of these old maids and these two priests, seeking to learn the cause of the sorrow which twisted their heartstrings, it will be revealed to you, perhaps, that certain passions must be experienced by man for there to develop within him the qualities that make a life noble, that widen its area, and stifle the egoism natural to all.”

He speaks truly.  Not for its own sake, always, should we love the light, but for the sake of what it illumines.  The fire on the mountain shines brightly, but there are few men on the mountain; and more service may often be rendered by the torchlight, there where the crowd is.  It is in the humble lives that is found the substance of great lives; and by watching the narrowest feelings does enlargement come to our own.  Nor is this from any repugnance these feelings inspire, but because they no longer accord with the majestic truth that controls us.  It is well to have visions of a better life than that of every day, but it is the life of every day from which elements of a better life must come.  We are told we should fix our eyes on high, far above life; but perhaps it is better still that our soul should look straight before it, and that the heights whereupon it should yearn to lay all its hopes and its dreams should be the mountain peaks that stand clearly out from the clouds that gild the horizon.

87.  This brings us back once again to external destiny; but the tears that external suffering wrings from us are not the only tears known to man.  The sage whom we love must dwell in the midst of all human passions, for only on the passions known to the heart can his wisdom safely be nourished.  They are nature’s artisans, sent by her to help us construct the palace of our consciousness—­of our happiness, in other words; and he who rejects these workers, deeming that he is able, unaided, to raise all the stones of life, will be compelled for ever to lodge his soul in a bare and gloomy cell.  The wise man learns to purify his passions; to stifle them can never be proof of wisdom.  And, indeed, these things are all governed by the position we take as we stand on the stairs of time.  To some of us moral infirmities are so many stairs tending downwards; to others they represent steps that lead us on high.  The wise man perchance may do things that are done by the unwise man also; but the latter is forced by his passions to become the abject slave of his instincts, whereas the sage’s passions will end by illumining much that was vague in his consciousness.  To