lurked? And though the body may often be powerless to add to its
strength, can this ever be true of the soul? Indeed, the more that
we think of it, the clearer does it become that there could be one
destiny only that might truly be said to triumph over man, the one
that might have the power loudly to cry unto all, "From this day
onward there shall come no more strength to thy soul, neither
strength nor ennoblement." But is there a destiny in the world
empowered to hold such language?

47. And yet virtue often is chastised, and the advent of misfortune
hastened, by the soul's very strength; for the greater our love may
be, the greater the surface becomes we expose to majestic sorrow;
wherefore none the less does the sage never cease his endeavours to
enlarge this beautiful surface. Yes, it must be admitted, destiny is
not always content to crouch in the darkness; her ice-cold hands
will at times go prowling in the light, and seize on more beautiful
victims. The tragic name of Antigone has already escaped me; and
there will, doubtless, be many will say, "She surely fell victim to
destiny, all her great force notwithstanding; and is she not the
instance we long have been seeking in vain?" It cannot be gainsaid:
Antigone fell into the hands of the ruthless goddess, for the reason
that there lay in her soul three times the strength of any ordinary
woman. She died; for fate had contrived it so that she had to choose
between death and what seemed to her a sister's imperative duty. She
suddenly found herself wedged between death and love--love of the
purest and most disinterested kind, its object being a shade she
would never behold on earth. And if destiny thus has enabled to lure
her into the murderous angle that duty and death had formed, it was
only because her soul, that was loftier far than the soul of the
others, saw, stretching before it, the insurmountable barrier of