, we may have good reason for preferring the
happiness of our choice. For, herein, it is not unlike what we are told
of love. To know what real love should be we must have loved
profoundly, and that first love must have fled. It is well to know
moments of material happiness, since they teach us where to look for
loftier joys; and all that we gain, perhaps, from listening to the
hours that babble aloud in their wantonness is that we are slowly
learning the language of the hours whose voice is hushed. And of these
there are many; they come in battalions, so close on the heels of each
other that treachery and flight cannot be; wherefore it is on them
alone that the sage should depend. For he will be happy whose eyes have
learned to detect the hidden smile and mysterious jewels of the myriad,
nameless hours; and where are these jewels to be found, if not in
ourselves?

90. But there is a kind of ignoble discretion that has least in common,
of all things, with the wisdom we speak of here; for we had far better
spend our energy round even fruitless happiness, than slumber by the
fireside awaiting joys that never may come. Only the joys that have
been offered to all, and none have accepted, will knock at his door who
refuses himself to stir forth. Nor is the other man wise who holds the
reins too tight on his feelings, and halts them when reason commands,
or experience whispers. The friend is not wise who will not confide in
his friend, remembering always that friendships may come to an end; nor
the lover, who draws back for fear lest he may find shipwreck in love.
For here, were we twenty times unfortunate, it is still only the
perishable portion of our energy for happiness that suffers; and what
is wisdom after all but this same energy for happiness cleansed of all
that is impure? To be wise we must first learn to be happy, that we may
attach ever smaller importance to what happiness may be in itself. We
should be as happy as possible, and our happiness should last as long
as is possible; for those who can finally issue forth from self by the
portal of happiness, know infinitely wider freedom than those who pass
through the gate of sadness. The joy of the sage illumines his heart
and his soul alike, whereas sadness most often throws light on the
heart alone. One might almost compare the man who had never been happy
with a traveller whose every journey had been taken by night. Moreover,
there is in happiness a humility deeper