relief of pain, while pain or evil is what is really positive; it is the
object of immediate sensation. With the possession or certain
expectation of good things our demands rises, and increases our capacity
for further possession and larger expectations. But if we are depressed
by continual misfortune, and our claims reduced to a minimum, the sudden
advent of happiness finds no capacity for enjoying it. Neutralized by an
absence of pre-existing claims, its effects are apparently positive, and
so its whole force is brought into play; hence it may possibly break our
feelings, _i.e._, be fatal to them. And so, as is well known, one must
be careful in announcing great happiness. First, one must get the person
to hope for it, then open up the prospect of it, then communicate part
of it, and at last make it fully known. Every portion of the good news
loses its efficacy, because it is anticipated by a demand, and room is
left for an increase in it. In view of all this, it may be said that our
stomach for good fortune is bottomless, but the entrance to it is
narrow. These remarks are not applicable to great misfortunes in the
same way. They are more seldom fatal, because hope always sets itself
against them. That an analogous part is not played by fear in the case
of happiness results from the fact that we are instinctively more
inclined to hope than to fear; just as our eyes turn of themselves
towards light rather than darkness.

* * * * *

Hope is the result of confusing the desire that something should take
place with the probability that it will. Perhaps no man is free from
this folly of the heart, which deranges the intellect's correct
appreciation of probability to such an extent that, if the chances are a
thousand to one against it, yet the event is thought a likely one. Still
in spite of this, a sudden misfortune is like a death stroke, whilst a
hope that is always disappointed and still never dies, is like death by
prolonged torture.

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; this is the meaning of
the expression "desperate." It is natural to a man to believe what he
wishes to be true, and to believe it because he wishes it, If this
characteristic of our nature, at once beneficial and assuaging, is
rooted out by many hard blows of fate, and a man comes, conversely, to a
condition in which he believes a thing must happen because he does not
wish it, and what he wishes to happen c