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infinitely with the evolution of the individual. The good, wise, and pure soul cannot find happiness in the same
manner as the vulgarian. As we mount, the aspect of things changes, and the child, growing, disdains the toys
which once captivated him. So the growing soul seeks nobler satisfactions and pleasures more profound. The
soul which looks from the heights and sees the glorious aim of life finds more felicity and serene peace in a
beautiful thought, a good work, an act of virtue, and even a purifying sorrow, than in all material wealth and
earthly glories, with their false intoxications. It is difficult to make man understand that suffering is good. Each
one would remake and embellish his life to his own taste, pluck from it all annoyances and troubles, not
thinking that there is no good without ill, no ascension without toil and effort.
The general tendency of man is to shut himself in the narrow circle of individualism, of self, and in
that way he dwarfs and limits all that is great in himself – all that is meant to dilate and grow and soar: the
thought, the consciousness – in a word, the soul. To break this circle and give freedom to the imprisoned
virtues, sorrow is necessary. Misfortunes and trials stir in us the sources of an unknown life – a more profound
life. Sadness and suffering cause us to see, hear, and feel a thousand delicate and powerful things that the
happy or the vulgar man never perceives. The material world begins to seem obscure – another is vaguely
designed but grows more and more distinct, in the measure that our attention is detached from inferior things
and plunged into the illimitable.
Misfortune and anguish are needed to give the soul its richness, its moral beauty, and to awaken its
sleeping senses. The sorrowful life is an alembic from which are distilled souls for better worlds. The form,
like the soul, is embellished by suffering. There is a charm, at once tender and serious, in the faces which have
been often bathed in tears. They take on an austere beauty – a sort of majesty – impressive, yet seductive.
Michael Angelo adopted, as rule of his life, the following principles: ‘Enter into yourself, and do as
the sculptor does with the work he seeks to make beautiful. Chisel off that which is superfluous, make clear
that which is obscure, let in the light from everywhere, and never cease chiseling your own statue.’ A sublime
maxim, and which contains the principle of inner perfection. The soul is our work – a work which surpasses in
grandeur all the partial manifestations of art.
Often the difficulties of execution are in accord with the splendor of the aim; and before this painful
task of interior reform, of incessant combat with the passions and material conditions, how often is the artisan
discouraged! How often he drops his chisel in despair! It is then God sends him an aid – sorrow! Sorrow goes
into the depths of the consciousness where the toiler himself could not penetrate, and remodels the contours,
and eliminates or destroys that which is useless or bad. And from the cold marble without form or beauty,
from the ugly or coarse statue that our hands have hardly outlined, sorrow brings forth in time the chefd’oeuvre
incomparable, the harmonic form of the divine Psyche.
* * *
Sorrow does not, then, strike only the culpable. In our world, honest men suffer as much as the
wicked. The virtuous soul, being more evolved, is more sensitive. Besides this, it loves deeply, and so seeks
sorrow, knowing the price. There are souls who come to earth for no other purpose than to give an example of
grandeur of suffering. They are missionaries, and their mission is no less grand than that of the great revealers.
We meet them in all times, and they occupy all planes of life – on high summits, splendid with the light of
history, and they are found among the humble and hidden in the common masses. We admire Christ, Socrates,
Antigone, but how many obscure victims of duty and love fall every day, upon whom descend silence and
forgetfulness. Yet their example is not lost: it illuminates the life of someone who was a witness to it. To be
full and fruitful, it is not indispensable that a life should be sown with acts of great sacrifice, or crowned by a
tragic death in the eyes of the world. There are many sad, colorless, effaced lives which are a continual effort,
a constant strife against misfortune and suffering. If we knew the hidden wounds in these hearts – the cruel
disappointments concealed from the world, they would be as interesting in our sight as the most celebrated
martyrs.
By this incessant combat with destiny they become heroic souls. Their triumphs are unknown, but all
the treasures of energy, of generous impulses, of patience and love which they have accumulated day by day,
constitute a capital of moral force and beauty which makes them equal to the noblest figures of history in the
world beyond.
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