ousness. For to possess consciousness of
oneself, to possess personality, is to know oneself and to feel oneself
distinct from other beings, and this feeling of distinction is only
reached through an act of collision, through suffering more or less
severe, through the sense of one's own limits. Consciousness of oneself
is simply consciousness of one's own limitation. I feel myself when I
feel that I am not others; to know and to feel the extent of my being is
to know at what point I cease to be, the point beyond which I no longer
am.

And how do we know that we exist if we do not suffer, little or much?
How can we turn upon ourselves, acquire reflective consciousness, save
by suffering? When we enjoy ourselves we forget ourselves, forget that
we exist; we pass over into another, an alien being, we alienate
ourselves. And we become centred in ourselves again, we return to
ourselves, only by suffering.

_Nessun maggior dolore
che ricordarsi del tempo felice
nella miseria_

are the words that Dante puts into the mouth of Francesca da Rimini
(_Inferno_, v., 121-123); but if there is no greater sorrow than the
recollection in adversity of happy bygone days, there is, on the other
hand, no pleasure in remembering adversity in days of prosperity.

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to
achieve nothing" (_polla phroneoita medenos chrateein_)--so
Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book
ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can
embrace everything, or almost everything; with the will nothing, or
almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness--no! not if this
contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our
knowledge and our power pity arises.

We pity what is like ourselves, and the greater and clearer our sense of
its likeness with ourselves, the greater our pity. And if we may say
that this likeness provokes our pity, it may also be maintained that it
is our reservoir of pity, eager to diffuse itself over everything, that
makes us discover the likeness of things with ourselves, the common bond
that unites us with them in suffering.

Our own struggle to acquire, preserve, and increase our own
consciousness makes us discover in the endeavours and movements and
revolutions of all things a struggle to acquire, preserve, and increase
consciousness, to which everything tends. Beneath the actions of