unvarying splendour. Far distant as Marcus Aurelius may be from the
traitor, it is still from the selfsame well that they both draw the
holy water that freshens their soul; and this well is not to be
found in the intellect. For, strangely enough, it is not in our
reason that moral life has its being; and he who would let reason
govern his life would be the most wretched of men. There is not a
virtue, a beautiful thought, or a generous deed, but has most of its
roots hidden far away from that which can be understood or
explained. Well might man be proud could he trace every virtue, and
joy, and his whole inward life, to the one thing he truly possesses,
the one thing on which he can depend--in a word, to his reason. But
do what he will, the smallest event that arrives will quickly
convince him that reason is wholly unable to offer him shelter; for
in truth we are beings quite other than merely reasonable creatures.

44. But if it be not our reason that chooses what suffering shall
bring us, whereby is the choice then made? By the life we have lived
till then, the life that has moulded our soul. Wisdom matures but
slowly; her fruits shall not quickly be gathered. If my life has not
been as that of Paulus Aemilius, there shall be no comfort for me in
the thoughts whereby he was consoled, not though every sage in the
world were to come and repeat them to me. The angels that dry our
eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought-
-above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.
When Thomas Carlyle (a sage, although somewhat morbid) lost the wife
he had tenderly loved, with whom he had lived forty years, then did
his sorrow too, with marvellous exactness, become as had been the
bygone life of his love. And therefore was this sorrow of his
majestic and vast; consoling and torturing alike in the midst of his
self-reproach, his regret, and his tenderness--as might be