What chiefly marks off the greatest souls from low-level vulgar ones, it seems to me, is that vulgar souls give themselves over to their passions and are happy or sad purely according to whether what happens to them is agreeable or unpleasant;
whereas great souls reason so powerfully that—although they too have passions, which are often more violent than those of the vulgar—their reason remains in command and brings it about that even afflictions serve them and contribute to the perfect happiness that they can enjoy not merely in the after-life but already in this life.
Here is how they do it. They bear in mind •that they are immortal and capable of receiving very great contentment, and on the other hand •that they are joined to mortal and fragile bodies that are bound to perish in a few years; so they do whatever they can to make fortune favourable in this
life, but they value this life so little from the perspective of eternity that they give ·worldly· events no more consideration than we give to events on the stage. Just as the sad stories that we weep to see represented on a stage often entertain
us as much as happy ones, so the greatest souls get an inner satisfaction from all the things that happen to them, even the most distressing and unbearable. When they feel pain in their bodies they try hard to put up with it, and this show of their strength is agreeable to them. Seeing a friend in some great trouble they feel compassion at the friend’s ill fortune and do all they can to rescue him from it,
and they aren’t afraid of risking death if that is necessary for this purpose. But the sadness that their compassion brings doesn’t afflict them, because they are happy over the testimony of their conscience, which tells them that they are
doing their duty, acting in a manner that is praiseworthy and virtuous. In short, just as the greatest prosperity of fortune never intoxicates them or makes them insolent, so also the greatest adversities can’t defeat them or make them so sad that the body to which they are joined falls ill.
whereas great souls reason so powerfully that—although they too have passions, which are often more violent than those of the vulgar—their reason remains in command and brings it about that even afflictions serve them and contribute to the perfect happiness that they can enjoy not merely in the after-life but already in this life.
Here is how they do it. They bear in mind •that they are immortal and capable of receiving very great contentment, and on the other hand •that they are joined to mortal and fragile bodies that are bound to perish in a few years; so they do whatever they can to make fortune favourable in this
life, but they value this life so little from the perspective of eternity that they give ·worldly· events no more consideration than we give to events on the stage. Just as the sad stories that we weep to see represented on a stage often entertain
us as much as happy ones, so the greatest souls get an inner satisfaction from all the things that happen to them, even the most distressing and unbearable. When they feel pain in their bodies they try hard to put up with it, and this show of their strength is agreeable to them. Seeing a friend in some great trouble they feel compassion at the friend’s ill fortune and do all they can to rescue him from it,
and they aren’t afraid of risking death if that is necessary for this purpose. But the sadness that their compassion brings doesn’t afflict them, because they are happy over the testimony of their conscience, which tells them that they are
doing their duty, acting in a manner that is praiseworthy and virtuous. In short, just as the greatest prosperity of fortune never intoxicates them or makes them insolent, so also the greatest adversities can’t defeat them or make them so sad that the body to which they are joined falls ill.
Descartes
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