" [6] But to many this isolation would be itself most painful,
for the heart is "no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that
joins to them." [7]
If we separate ourselves so much from the interests of those around us
that we do not sympathize with them in their sufferings, we shut ourselves
out from sharing their happiness, and lose far more than we gain. If we
avoid sympathy and wrap ourselves round in a cold chain armor of
selfishness, we exclude ourselves from many of the greatest and purest
joys of life. To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also
the possibility of happiness.
Moreover, much of what we call evil is really good in disguise, and we
should not "quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor
overlook the mercies often bound up in them." [8] Pleasure and pain are,
as Plutarch says, the nails which fasten body and soul together. Pain is a
warning of danger, a very necessity of existence. But for it, but for the
warnings which our feelings give us, the very blessings by which we are
surrounded would soon and inevitably prove fatal.
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