BIRDS OF PREY. 155 



Ah! our globe is a barbarous world, though still in its youth; a 

 world of attempts and rude beginnings, given over to cruel slaveries — 

 to nio-ht, hunger, death, fear! Death? We can accept it; there 

 is in the soul enough of hope and faith to look upon it as a passage, 

 a stao-e of initiation, a gate to better worlds. But, alas, was pain so 

 useful as to render it necessary to prodigalize it? I feel it, I 

 see it I hear it everywhere. Not to hear it, to preserve the 

 thread of my thoughts, I am forced to stop up my ears. All the 

 activity of my soul would be suspended, my nerves shattered by it ; 

 I should effect nothing more, I should no longer move forward; my 

 life and powers of production would remain barren, annihilated by 



pity ! 



" And vet is not pain the warning which teaches us to foresee and 

 to anticipate, and by every means in our power to ward off our dissolu- 

 tion ? This cruel school is the stimulant and spur of prudence for all 

 livino- things — a powerful drawing back of the soul upon itself, which 

 otherwise would be enfeebled by happiness, by soft and weakening 

 impressions. 



" May it not be said that happiness has a centrifugal attraction 

 which diffuses us wholly without, detains us, dissipates us, would 

 evaporate and restore us to the elements, if we wholly abandoned 

 ourselves to it ? Pain, on the contrary, if experienced at one point, 

 brings back all to the centre, knits closer, prolongs, ensures and 

 fortifies existence. 



" Pain is in some wise the artist of the world which creates us, 

 fashions us, sculptures us with the fine edge of a pitiless chisel. It 

 limits the overflowing life. And that which remains, stronger and 

 more exquisite, enriched by its very loss, draws thence the gift of a 

 higher being." 



Tliese thoughts of resignation were awakened by one who was 

 herself a sufferer, and whose clear eye discerned, even before I myself 

 did, my troubles and my doubts. 



As the individual, said she again, so is the world. Earth itself has 

 been benefited by Pain. Nature begot her through the violent 



