exorable, inaccessible, unfathomable abyss. It is build up of the
energy, the desires and suffering, the thoughts and passions of our
brothers; and these passions should be well known to us, for they
differ not from our own. In our most inexplicable moments, in our most
mysterious, unexpected misfortunes, we rarely find ourselves struggling
with an invisible enemy, or one that is entirely foreign to us. Why
strive of our own free will to enlarge the domain of the inevitable?
They who are truly strong are aware that among the forces that oppose
their schemes there are some that they know not; but against such as
they do know they fight on as bravely as though no others existed; and
these men will be often victorious. We shall have added most strangely
to our safety and happiness and peace the day that our sloth and our
ignorance shall have ceased to term fatal. What should truly be looked
on as human and natural by our intelligence and our energy.

19. Let us consider one noteworthy victim of destiny, Louis XVI. Never,
it would seem, did relentless fatality clamour so loudly for the
destruction of an unfortunate man; of one who was gentle, and good, and
virtuous, and honourable. And yet, as we look more closely into the
pages of history, do we not find that fatality distils her poison from
the victim's own wavering feebleness, his own trivial duplicity,
blindness, unreason, and vanity? And if it be true that some kind of
predestination governs every circumstance of life, it appears to be no
less true that such predestination exists in our character only; and to
modify character must surely be easy to the man of unfettered will, for
is it not constantly changing in the lives of the vast bulk of men? Is
your own character, at thirty, the same as it was when you were ten
years younger? It will be better or worse in the measure that you have
believed that disloyalty, wickedness, hatred and falsehood have
triumphed in life, or goodness, and truth, and love. And you will have
thought that you witnessed the triumph of hatred or love, of truth or
of falsehood, in exact accord with the lofty or baser idea as to the
happiness and aim of your life that will slowly have arisen within you.
For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If
your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil
triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on
sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover, de