The nothingness of
our joys, the emptiness of our existence, and the futility of our
ambitions, filled me with a quiet disgust. From regret to disenchantment
I floated on to Buddhism, to universal weariness. Ah, the hope of a
blessed immortality would be better worth having!
With what different eyes one looks at life at ten, at twenty, at thirty,
at sixty! Those who live alone are specially conscious of this
psychological metamorphosis. Another thing, too, astonishes them; it is
the universal conspiracy which exists for hiding the sadness of the
world, for making men forget suffering, sickness, and death, for
smothering the wails and sobs which issue from every house, for painting
and beautifying the hideous face of reality. Is it out of tenderness for
childhood and youth, or is it simply from fear, that we are thus careful
to veil the sinister truth? Or is it from a sense of equity? and does
life contain as much good as evil--perhaps more? However it may be, men
feed themselves rather upon illusion than upon truth. Each one unwinds
his own special reel of hope, and as soon as he has come to the end of
it he sits him down to die, and lets his sons and his grandsons begin
the same experience over again. We all pursue happiness, and happiness
escapes the pursuit of all.
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