This is terrible, and it used to make me tremble, for somehow or other
the thought of death always seems to me very close at hand. But I have
got hardened to it, and I can only wish to the orthodox a peace
of mind equal to that which I enjoy. I may safely say that since I
accomplished my sacrifice, amid outward sorrows greater than would be
believed, and which, from perhaps a false feeling of delicacy, I have
concealed from every one, I have tasted a peace which was unknown to
me during periods of my life to all appearance more serene. You
must not accept, my dear friend, certain generalities in regard to
happiness which are very erroneous, and all of which assume that one
cannot be happy except by consistency, and with a perfectly harmonized
intellectual system. At this rate, no one would be happy, or only
those whose limited intelligence could not rise to the conception
of problems or of doubt. It is fortunately not so; and we owe our
happiness to a piece of inconsistency, and to a certain turn of the
wheel which causes us to take patiently what with another turn of the
wheel would be absolute torture. I imagine that you must have felt
this. There is a sort of inward debate going on within us with regard
to happiness, and by it we are inevitably influenced in the way
we take a certain thing; for there is no one who will deny that
he contains within himself a thousand germs which might render him
absolutely wretched. The question is whether he will allow them free
course, or whether he will abstract himself from them.
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