right to lift
its head again except at the moment when we incline once more towards
the abyss it guards.

Bitter, surely, must be the grief of him in whose past there are acts
of injustice whereof every avenue now is closed, who is no longer able
to seek out his victims, and raise them and comfort them. To have
abused one's strength in order to despoil some feeble creature who has
definitely succumbed beneath the blow; to have callously thrust
suffering upon a loving heart, or merely misunderstood and passed by a
touching affection that offered itself--these things must of necessity
weigh heavily upon our life, and induce a sorrow within us that shall
not readily be forgotten. But it depends on the actual point our
consciousness has attained whether our entire moral destiny shall be
depressed or lifted beneath this burden. Our actions rarely die: and
many unjust deeds of ours will therefore inevitably return to life some
day to claim their due and start legitimate reprisals. They will find
our external life without defence; but before they can reach the inward
being at the centre of that life, they must first listen to the
judgment we have already passed on ourselves; and in accordance with
the nature of that judgment will the attitude be of these mysterious
envoys, who have come from the depths where cause and effect are poised
in eternal equilibrium. If it has indeed been from the heights of our
newly acquired consciousness that we have questioned ourselves, and
condemned, they will not be menacing justiciaries whom we shall
suddenly see surging in from all sides, but benevolent visitors,
friends we have almost expected, and they will draw near us in silence.
They know in advance that the man before them is no longer the guilty
creature they sought; and instead of bringing hatred, revolt, and
despair, or punishments that degrade and kill, they will come charged
with ennobling, consoling and purifying thought and penance.

10

The things which differentiate the happy and strong from those who weep
and will not be consoled, all derive from the one same principle of
confidence and ardour; and thus it is that the manner in which we are
able to recall what we have done or suffered is far more important than
our actual sufferings or deeds. No past, viewed by itself, can seem
happy; and the privileged of fate, who reflect on what remains of the
happy years that have flown, have perhaps more reason for sorrow than