renunciation means the deliberate
putting away of something keenly loved, anxiously desired, or actually
possessed; it does not mean a well-weighed acceptance of the lesser,
rather than the greater, trials of life. When Orange had faced the
desolate road before him it was as though men ploughed into his heart
and left it mangled. Submission to the severities of God whatever they
might be, obedience to authority, a companionless existence--these were
the conditions, he knew, of the meagre joy permitted to those who, full
of intellect, feeling, and kindness, undertook the rigorous discipline
of a solitary journey. The world seldom takes account of the unhappy
sensitiveness in devout souls; it thinks them insensible not only
because they know how to keep silent, but how to sacrifice their secret
woes. And what, after all, are the gratified expectations of any career
in comparison with its hidden despairs?

It may be a fact that love, in every imaginative mind, approaches
madness; on the other hand, the least imaginative are often not merely
attracted but carried away, without any sort of consent, by some
over-mastering human magnetism. To love well is a quality in
temperament, just as to preach well, or to conduct a siege well, or to
tend the sick well, or, in fact, to do anything well, is a special
distinction, a ruling motive in the great pursuit of absolute
felicity--a pursuit which is the inalienable right of all human
creatures, whether fixed mistakenly in this world, or wisely in the
next. No calling can be obeyed without suffering, but as in the old
legend each man's cross was found exquisitely fitted to his own back, so
a vocation is found to be just when, on the whole, one has fewer
misgivings that way than in any other. By the exercise of
self-discipline one may do much that is not repulsive only but
suicidal--a man may so treat his spirit that it becomes a sort of
petrified vapour. When, however, he has dosed, reduced, tortured, and
killed every vital instinct in his nature till he is an empty shape and
nothing more, he must not flatter himself that he has accomplished a
great work. Life is not for the dead, but for the living, and in
crucifying our flesh we have to be quite certain that we are playing no
ghost's farce, inflicting airy penalties on some handfuls of harsh
dust. Robert could not feel that absorbing interest in himself which
enables so many to cut themselves adrift, painfully, no doubt, from
ever