th every fresh crime. And if this be
true of the great crimes of kings and the virtues of heroes, it is no
less true of the humblest faults and most hidden virtues of ordinary
life. Many a youthful Marcus Aurelius is still about us; many a
Macbeth, who never stirs from his room. However imperfect our
conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment's
forgetfulness exposes us to all the malignant forces from without. The
simplest lie to myself, buried though it may be in the silence of my
soul, may yet be as dangerous to my inner liberty as an act of
treachery on the marketplace. And from the moment that my inner liberty
is threatened, destiny prowls around my external liberty as stealthily
as a beast of prey that has long been tracking its victim.

77. Can we conceive a situation in life wherein a man who is truly wise
and noble can be made to suffer as profoundly as the man who follows
evil? In this world it is far more certain that vice will be punished,
than that virtue will meet with reward; yet we must bear in mind that
it is the habit of crime to shriek aloud beneath its punishment,
whereas virtue rewards itself in the silence that is the walled garden
of its happiness. Evil drags horrid catastrophe behind it; but an act
of virtue is only a silent offering to the profoundest laws of life;
and therefore, doubtless, does the balance of mighty justice seem more
ready to incline beneath deeds of darkness than beneath those of light.
But if we can scarcely believe that "happiness in crime" be possible,
have we more warrant for faith in the "unhappiness of virtue"? We know
that the executioner can stretch Spinoza on the rack, and that terrible
disease will spare Antoninus Pius no more than Goneril or Regan; but
pain such as this belongs to the animal, not the human, side of man.
Wisdom has indeed sent science, the youngest of her sisters, into the
realm of destiny, with the mission to bring the zone of physical
suffering within ever-narrowing limits; but there are inaccessible
regions within that realm, where disaster ever will rule. Some stricken
ones there will always be, victims to irreducible injustice; and yet
will the true wisdom, in the midst of its sorrow, only be fortified
thereby, only gain in self-reliance and humanity all that it, may lose
in more mystic qualities. We become truly just only when it is finally
borne home to us that we must search within ourselves for our model of
justice. Again, i