ee peaks that
stand too nearly together. In the second is far less sadness, for its
area is vast; and when the horizon is wide, there exists no sorrow so
great but it takes the form of a hope.

31

Yes, human life, viewed as a whole, may appear somewhat sorrowful; and
it is easier, in a manner pleasanter even, to speak of its sorrows and
let the mind dwell on them, than to go in search of, and bring into
prominence, the consolations life has to offer. Sorrows
abound--infallible, evident sorrows; consolations, or rather the
reasons wherefore we accept with some gladness the duty of life, are
rare and uncertain, and hard of detection. Sorrows seem noble, and
lofty, and fraught with deep mystery; with mystery that almost is
personal, that we feel to be near to us. Consolations appear
egotistical, squalid, at times almost base. But for all that, and
whatever their ephemeral likeness may be, we have only to draw closer
to them to find that they too have their mystery; and if this seem less
visible and less comprehensible, it is only because it lies deeper and
is far more mysterious. The desire to live, the acceptance of life as
it is, may perhaps be mere vulgar expressions; but yet they are
probably in unconscious harmony with laws that are vaster, more
conformable with the spirit of the universe, and therefore more sacred,
than is the desire to escape the sorrows of life, or the lofty but
disenchanted wisdom that for ever dwells on those sorrows.

32

Our impulse is always to depict life as more sorrowful than truly it
is; and this is a serious error, to be excused only by the doubts that
at present hang over us. No satisfying explanation has so far been
found. The destiny of man is as subject to unknown forces to-day as it
was in the days of old; and though it be true that some of these forces
have vanished, others have arisen in their stead. The number of those
that are really all-powerful has in no way diminished. Many attempts
have been made, and in countless fashions, to explain the action of
these forces and account for their intervention; and one might almost
believe that the poets, aware of the futility of these explanations in
face of a reality which, all things notwithstanding, is ever revealing
more and more of itself, have fallen back on fatality as in some
measure representing the inexplicable, or at least the sadness of the
inexplicable. This is all that we find in Ibsen, the Russian novels