upon it should yearn to lay all its hopes
and its dreams should be the mountain peaks that stand clearly out from
the clouds that gild the horizon.

87. This brings us back once again to external destiny; but the tears
that external suffering wrings from us are not the only tears known to
man. The sage whom we love must dwell in the midst of all human
passions, for only on the passions known to the heart can his wisdom
safely be nourished. They are nature's artisans, sent by her to help us
construct the palace of our consciousness--of our happiness, in other
words; and he who rejects these workers, deeming that he is able,
unaided, to raise all the stones of life, will be compelled for ever to
lodge his soul in a bare and gloomy cell. The wise man learns to purify
his passions; to stifle them can never be proof of wisdom. And, indeed,
these things are all governed by the position we take as we stand on
the stairs of time. To some of us moral infirmities are so many stairs
tending downwards; to others they represent steps that lead us on high.
The wise man perchance may do things that are done by the unwise man
also; but the latter is forced by his passions to become the abject
slave of his instincts, whereas the sage's passions will end by
illumining much that was vague in his consciousness. To love madly,
perhaps, is not wise; still, should he love madly, more wisdom will
doubtless come to him than if he had always loved wisely. It is not
wisdom, but the most useless form of pride that can flourish in vacancy
and inertia. It is not enough to know what should be done, not though
we can unerringly declare what saint or hero would do. Such things a
book can teach in a day. It is not enough to intend to live a noble
life and then retire to a cell, there to brood over this intention. No
wisdom thus acquired can truly guide or beautify the soul; it is of as
little avail as the counsels that others can offer. "It is in the
silence that follows the storm," says a Hindu proverb, "and not in the
silence before it, that we should search for the budding flower."

88. The earnest wayfarer along the paths of life does but become the
more deeply convinced, as his travels extend, of the beauty, the
wisdom, and truth of the simplest and humblest laws of existence. Their
uniformity, the mere fact of their being so general, such matter of
every day, are in themselves enough to compel his admiration. And
little by little he holds the abn