e and not
Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining
unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of
Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality lurked? And
though the body may often be powerless to add to its strength, can this
ever be true of the soul? Indeed, the more that we think of it, the
clearer does it become that there could be one destiny only that might
truly be said to triumph over man, the one that might have the power
loudly to cry unto all, "From this day onward there shall come no more
strength to thy soul, neither strength nor ennoblement." But is there a
destiny in the world empowered to hold such language?

47. And yet virtue often is chastised, and the advent of misfortune
hastened, by the soul's very strength; for the greater our love may be,
the greater the surface becomes we expose to majestic sorrow; wherefore
none the less does the sage never cease his endeavours to enlarge this
beautiful surface. Yes, it must be admitted, destiny is not always
content to crouch in the darkness; her ice-cold hands will at times go
prowling in the light, and seize on more beautiful victims. The tragic
name of Antigone has already escaped me; and there will, doubtless, be
many will say, "She surely fell victim to destiny, all her great force
notwithstanding; and is she not the instance we long have been seeking
in vain?" It cannot be gainsaid: Antigone fell into the hands of the
ruthless goddess, for the reason that there lay in her soul three times
the strength of any ordinary woman. She died; for fate had contrived it
so that she had to choose between death and what seemed to her a
sister's imperative duty. She suddenly found herself wedged between
death and love--love of the purest and most disinterested kind, its
object being a shade she would never behold on earth. And if destiny
thus has enabled to lure her into the murderous angle that duty and
death had formed, it was only because her soul, that was loftier far
than the soul of the others, saw, stretching before it, the
insurmountable barrier of duty--that her poor sister Ismene could not
see, even when it was shown her. And, at that moment, as they both
stood there on the threshold of the palace, the same voices spoke to
them; Antigone listening only to the voice from above, wherefore she
died; Ismene unconscious of any save that which came from below--and
she lived. But instil into Antigone's soul