The littleness of it!

    But if he falls into his enemies' hands, into prison?

    There is always the way towards escape, if none towards
well-being.

    But if his nearest be taken from him, his sons and daughters
dragged away to captivity?

    What then, we ask, if he had died without witnessing the wrong?
Could he have quitted the world in the calm conviction that nothing of
all this could happen? He must be very shallow. Can he fail to see
that it is possible for such calamities to overtake his household, and
does he cease to be a happy man for the knowledge of what may occur?
In the knowledge of the possibility he may be at ease; so, too, when
the evil has come about.

    He would reflect that the nature of this All is such as brings
these things to pass and man must bow the head.

    Besides in many cases captivity will certainly prove an advantage;
and those that suffer have their freedom in their hands: if they stay,
either there is reason in their staying, and then they have no real
grievance, or they stay against reason, when they should not, and then
they have themselves to blame. Clearly the absurdities of his
neighbours, however near, cannot plunge the Sage into evil: his
state cannot hang upon the fortunes good or bad of any other men.

    8. As for violent personal sufferings, he will carry them off as
well as he can; if they overpass his endurance they will carry him
off.

    And so in all his pain he asks no pity: there is always the
radiance in the inner soul of the man, untroubled like the light in
a lantern when fierce gusts beat about it in a wild turmoil of wind
and tempest.

    But what if he be put beyond himself? What if pain grow so intense
and so torture him that the agony all but kills? Well, when he is
put to torture he will plan what is to be done: he retains his freedom
of action.

    Besides we must remember that the Sage sees things very
differently from the average man; neither ordinary experiences nor
pains and sorrows, whether touching himself or others, pierce to the
inner hold. To allow them any such passage would be a weakness in
our soul.

    And it is a sign of weakness, too, if we should think it gain
not to hear of miseries, gain to die before they come: this is not
concern for others' welfare but for our own peace of mind. Here we see
our imperfection: we must not indulge it, we must put it from us and
cease to tremble over what perhaps may be.

    Anyone that says that it is in human nature to grieve over
misfortune to our household must learn that this is not so with all,
and that, precisely, it is virtue's use to raise the general level
of nature towards the better and finer, above the mass of men. And the
finer is to set at nought what terrifies the common mind.

    We cannot be indolent: this is an arena for the powerful combatant
holding his ground against the blows of fortune, and knowing that,
sore though they be to some natures, they are little to his, nothing
dreadful, nursery terrors.

    So, the Sage would have desired misfortune?

    It is precisely to meet the undesired when it appears that he
has the virtue which gives him, to confront it, his passionless and
unshakeable soul.

    9. But when he is out of himself, reason quenched by sickness or
by magic arts?

    If it be allowed that in this state, resting as it were in a
slumber, he remains a Sage, why should he not equally remain happy? No
one rules him out of felicity in the hours of sleep; no one counts
up that time and so denies that he has been happy all his life.

    If they say that, failing consciousness, he is no longer the Sage,
then they are no longer reasoning about the Sage: but we do suppose
a Sage, and are enquiring whether, as long as he is the Sage, he is in
the state of felicity.

    "Well, a Sage let him remain," they say, "still, having no
sensation and not expressing his virtue in act, how can he be happy?"

    But a man unconscious of his health may be, none the less,
healthy: a man may not be aware of his personal attraction, but he
remains handsome none the less: if he has no sense of his wisdom,
shall he be any the less wise?

    It may perhaps be urged that sensation and consciousness are
essential to wisdom and that happiness is only wisdom brought to act.

    Now, this argument might have weight if prudence, wisdom, were
something fetched in from outside: but this is not so: wisdom is, in
its essential nature, an Authentic-Existence, or rather is The