I do not mean the religious peace, such as I see in some
people, which consists in holding as a certainty a scheme of things
which I believe to be either untrue or uncertain--and about which,
at all events, no certainty is logically and rationally possible.
The peace I mean is a frame of mind which a man would have, who
loved passionately, who suffered acutely, who desired intensely,
who feared greatly; and yet for whom, behind love and pain, desire
and fear, there existed a sort of inner citadel, in which his soul
was entrenched and impregnable.
Such a security could not be a wholly rational thing, because
reason cannot solve the enigmas with which we are confronted; but
it must not be an irrational intuition either, because then it
would be unattainable by a man of high intellectual gifts; and the
peace that I speak of ought to be consistent with any and every
constitution--physical, moral, mental. It must be consistent with
physical weakness, with liability to strong temptations, with an
incisive and penetrating intellectual quality; its essence would be
a sort of vital faith, a unity of the individual heart with the
heart of the world. It would rise like a rock above the sea, like a
lighthouse, where a guarded flame would burn high and steady,
however loudly the surges thundered below upon the reefs, however
fiercely the spray was dashed against the glasses of the casements.
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