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and suffering are twins and separation is impossible. How we wish we had been let off scot-free; how like miserable shirkers we wish our bed had no crumpled rose leaves. Yet would you who weep and lament be minus the experience and wisdom you have stored up through efforts to brush pain aside? No right have we then to rule off pain as a visitation of a wrathful Deity. Bather, we shall see Cause and Effect, not somewhere and sometimes but everywhere and always. That is the position of Strength. Every sweet has its sour. We shall confront fate with fate, fire with fire, and, standing aside, see the one eat the other. The end of all philosophy is the destruction of pain. Not milksops and lunatics, but men of iron courage are philosophers. Philosophy is thought passed and purified through the fire of the Living Spirit. It is deathless, birthless truth established in the constitution of man. Clay and clay differ, they say, so thought and thought vary in power, tenacity and texture. Man is a living magnet. He attracts. He repels. He draws in his own; he throws out what is not related to him. As Emerson, the western child of eastern thought sings:- 'And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone Will rive the hills and swim the sea, And, like thy shadow, follow thee.' Just that comes to us which is ours by right of thought; just that flies off from us which is not ours. |
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