drift wherever the mind bears us. Just as the skilled sailor can
tack up against the wind, and use ingenuity to compel a contrary breeze
to bring him to the haven of his desire, so we must be wise in trimming
our sails to the force of circumstance; while there is an eager delight
in making adverse conditions help us to realise our hopes.

The timid soul that loves delight is apt to say to itself, "I am happy
now in health and circumstances and friends, but I lean out into the
future, and see that health must fail and friends must drift away;
death must part me from those I love; and beyond all this, I see the
cloudy gate through which I must myself pass, and I do not know what
lies beyond it." That is true enough! It is like the story of the old
prince, as told by Herodotus, who said in his sorrowful age that the
Gods gave man only a taste of life, just enough to let him feel that
life was sweet, and then took the cup from his lips. But if we look
fairly at life, at our own life, at other lives, we see that pleasure
and contentment, even if we hardly realised that it was contentment at
the time, have largely predominated over pain and unhappiness; a man
must be very rueful and melancholy before he will deliberately say that
life has not been worth living, though I suppose that there have
probably been hours in the lives of all of us when we have thought and
said and even believed that we would rather not have lived at all than
suffer so. Neither must we pass over the fact that every day there are
men and women who, under the pressure of calamity and dismay, bring
their lives to a voluntary end.

But we have to be very dull and thankless and slow of heart not to feel
that by being allowed to live, for however short a time, we have been
allowed to take part in a very beautiful and wonderful thing. The
loveliness of earth, its colours, its lights, its scents, its savours,
the pleasures of activity and health, the sharp joys of love and
friendship, these are surely very great and marvellous experiences, and
the Mind which planned them must be full of high purpose, eager
intention, infinite goodwill. And we may go further than that, and see
that even our sorrows and failures have often brought something great
to our view, something which we feel we have learned and apprehended,
something which we would not have missed, and which we cannot do
without. If we will frankly recognise all this, we cannot feebly
crumple up at the