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