us all--some find it interesting; some surprising; some find it
entirely satisfactory. But those who find it satisfactory seem to
me, as a rule, to be tough, coarse, healthy natures, who find
success attractive and food digestible: who do not trouble their
heads very much about other people, but go cheerfully and
optimistically on their way, closing their eyes as far as possible
to things painful and sorrowful, and getting all the pleasure they
can out of material enjoyments.

Well, to speak very sincerely and humbly, such a life seems to me
the worst kind of failure. It is the life that men were living in
the days of Noah, and out of such lives comes nothing that is wise
or useful or good. Such men leave the world as they found it,
except for the fact that they have eaten a little way into it, like
a mite into a cheese, and leave a track of decomposition behind
them.

I do not know why so much that is hard and painful and sad is
interwoven with our life here; but I see, or seem to see, that it
is meant to be so interwoven. All the best and most beautiful
flowers of character and thought seem to me to spring up in the
track of suffering; and what is the most sorrowful of all
mysteries, the mystery of death, the ceasing to be, the
relinquishing of our hopes and dreams, the breaking of our dearest
ties, becomes more solemn and awe-inspiring the nearer we advance
to it.

I do not mean that we are to go and search for unhappiness; but, on
the other hand, the only happiness worth seeking for is a happiness
which takes all these dark things into account, looks them in the