Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/227

pride; those who enviously long for the advantages which others enjoy, yet force themselves to change this sadness into a pious contentment; those who trample under foot the aspirations of ambition which lifted them to the clouds; those who, inclined to idleness, become diligent; those who, oppressed by melancholy, chase away all gloom and raise themselves to a spiritual joy; those who, enamored of themselves, immolate their egotism for the love of their neighbor, offering for them, with heroic zeal, the most perfect of sacrifices, their own life.

Mankind has unanimously recognized a sanctifying virtue in grief. This is why, through all ages, in every zone, and among all nations, man has rendered homage and worship to great misfortune. Œdipus is greater in the day of his calamity than in the days of his glory—the world would have forgotten his name if the thunderbolt of divine vengeance had not hurled him from his throne. The melancholy beauty which invests the countenance of Germanicus with so much attraction, is the reflection of the sorrow which blasted the spring time of his life, and of his beautiful death, far from his beloved country and the sky of Rome. Marius, who in the arrogance of victory is only a cruel man, becomes sublime when he is precipitated from this eminence, and is a wanderer in the marshes of Minturnæ. Mithridates appears to us greater than Pompey, and Hannibal superior to Scipio. Man, without knowing wherefore, always inclines in favor of the conquered, and misfortune has greater charms for him than victory. Socrates is less great in life than in death; nor has he acquired immortality because he knew how to live, but on account of his heroic death. He is less indebted to philosophy than to the cup of hemlock. Mankind would have com-