his had acquired, then is each falling tear illumined by beautiful
thought and by generous feeling. He would have taken calamity to
him, to all that was purest, most vast, in his soul; and misfortune,
like water, espouses the form of the vase that contains it.
Antoninus, we say, would have brought resignation to bear; but this
is a word that too often conceals the true working of a noble heart.
There is no soul so petty but what it too may believe that it is
resigned. Alas! it is not resignation that comforts us, raises and
chastens; but indeed the thoughts and the feelings in whose name we
embrace resignation; and it is here that wisdom doles out the
rewards they have earned to her faithful.

Some ideas there are that lie beyond the reach of any catastrophe.
He will be far less exposed to disaster who cherishes ideas within
him that soar high above the indifference, selfishness, vanities of
everyday life. And therefore, come happiness or sorrow, the happiest
man will be he within whom the greatest idea shall burn the most
ardently. Had fate so desired it, Antoninus also, perhaps, had been
guilty of incest and parricide; but his inward life would not have
been crushed thereby, as was that of Oedipus; nay, these very
catastrophes would have given him mightier strength, and destiny
would have fled in despair, strewing the ground by the emperor's
palace with her nets and her blunted weapons; for even as triumph of
dictators and consuls could be celebrated only in Rome, so can the
true triumph of Fate take place nowhere save in our soul.

17. Where do we find the fatality in "Hamlet," "King Lear," in
"Macbeth"? Is its throne not erected in the very centre of the old
king's madness, on the lowest degree of the young prince's
imagination, at the very summit of the Thane's morbid cravings?