II.  Hearty acquiescence in our lot.

The fighter, for whatever cause, can bear the blows that come as a part of the battle; if a man has put his heart into living by his ideal, he is immune from the disappointments and irritations that beset man upon a lower level.  But it is well to take thought also for this side of the matter, to cultivate deliberately the spirit of acquiescence in the inevitable pain and losses of life.  Many of the sweetest pleasures are by their nature uncertain or transient; these we must hold so loosely that, while not refusing to enjoy their sweetness, we are ]ot dependent upon them and can let them go without losing sight of the steady gleam that we follow.  However dear to us are the people we love, and the material things we own, we must keep the underlying assurance that if they be taken from us life will still bring us in other ways renewed opportunities for that loyalty to duty, that faithful living, which is after all the end for which we live.  We must count whatever comes to us, whether sweet or bitter, as the conditions under which we serve, the material with which we have to work, the stuff which we have to “try the soul’s strength on.”  For there is no way to be armor-proof against unhappiness but by seeing to it that our hearts are not set on anything but doing or being; nothing else is reliably permanent amid the fitful sunshine and shadow of human life.  “Make hy claim of wages a zero; then hast thou the world at thy feet.” [Footnote:  In Maeterlinck’s Measure of the Hours, he speaks of a sundial found near Venice by Hazlitt with the inscription, Horas non numero nisi serenas and quotes Hazlitt’s remarks thereon:  “What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten.”] This necessity of detaching the heart from dependence upon uncertainties found extreme expression in the various historic forms of asceticism and monasticism.  Such a running away from the world does not satisfy our age, with its eagerness for life and life more abundantly; if it escapes the poignant sorrows it cannot happiness, or make life better for others.  But we may well take to heart the half-truth taught by the hermits and monks of the past.  We may be “in the world,” indeed, but not “of it”; we, too, may make no claims upon life, while putting our hearts into playing our own part in it well.  The writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are full of passages that express the gist of the matter, such as the following:  “It is thy duty to order thy life well in every single act; and if every act does its duty as far as is possible, be content; no one is able to hinder thee so that each act shall not do its duty.  But something external will stand in the way?  Nothing