"Mighty indeed; and these thoughts of yours are so
dreary, how can one believe in them and live!"
"We are compelled to live," replied he, "even by that same decree which
binds us to the infinite chain. Were it not so, man would imitate the
day-flies, and die at sundown, that he might escape the dark night which
reveals to him the mystery of his being, whereat he trembles and sobs;
and all this is also in the decree."
"But if all these things are so," said Rachel, "what do you say of
happiness? Is there no joy in the world? Are not the birds happy, when
in the morning the woods resound with their song, and so, too, every
animal after its kind? Are not children joyful when the house rings with
their mirth? and have not men and women their pleasures of a thousand
kinds? nay, might not I myself have been one of the happiest of beings,
if, with the fortune which is to be left to me, that locket had been
engraved with the name of Rachel Grierson in place of Agnes Ainslie?"
"Yes," replied he, "happiness is in the decree as well; and," he added
with a smile, "it is always cropping out around us, but no one can
manufacture the article. If you wait for it, you may feel it; if you run
after it, you will probably not find it, because it is not ready by
those eternal laws which, at their beginning, involved its coming up at
a certain moment of long after-years.
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