self; and looking back
I can recall no crisis which turned out either as intricate or as
difficult as one expected.

Let me admit that I have more than once in life made grave mistakes
through this timidity and indolence, or through an imaginativeness
which could see in a great opportunity nothing but a sea of troubles,
which would, I do not doubt, have melted away as one advanced. But no
one has suffered except myself! Institutions do not depend upon
individuals; and I regard such failures now just as the petulant
casting away of a chance of experience, as a lesson which I would not
learn; but there is nothing irreparable about it; one only comes, more
slowly and painfully, to the same goal at last. I dare not say that I
regret it all, for we are all of us, whether small or great, being
taught a mighty truth, whether we wish it or know it; and all that we
can do to hasten it is to put our will into the right scale. I do not
think mistakes and failures ought to trouble one much; at all events
there is no fear mingled with them. But I do not here claim to have
attained any real serenity--my own heart is too impatient, too fond of
pleasure for that!--yet I can see clearly enough that it is there, if I
could but grasp it; and I know well enough how it is to be attained, by
being content to wait, and by realising at every instant and moment of
life that, in spite of my tremors and indolences, my sharp impatiences,
my petulant disgusts, something very real and great is being shown me,
which I shall at last, however dimly, perceive; and that even so the
goal of the journey is far beyond any horizon that I can conceive, and
built up like the celestial city out of unutterable brightness and
clearness, upon a foundation of peace and joy.

It is very difficult to determine, by any exercise of the intellect or
imagination, what fears would remain to us if we were freed from the
dominion of the body. All material fears and anxieties would come to an
end; we should no longer have any poverty to dread, or any of the
limitations or circumscriptions which the lack of the means of life
inflicts upon us; we should have no ambitions left, because the
ambitions which centre on influence--that is, upon the desire to direct
and control the interests of a nation or a group of individuals--have
no meaning apart from the material framework of civil life. The only
kind of influence which would survive would be the influence of
emotion, the dir