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263 spiritual restlessness is spiritual sluggishness; and that, as everybody is aware, is as tedious a thing as it is insipid. For the individual the lesson of this tragedy is always hard; and he learns it first in a religious form in the mood of pure resignation. “I cannot be happy; I must resign happiness.” This is what all the Imitations and the Schopenhauers are forever and very justly teaching to the individual. Schopenhauer’s special reason for this view is, however, the deep and philosophical one that at the heart of the world there seems to be an element of capricious conflict. That fact was what drove him to reject the World Spirit of the constructive idealists, and to speak only of a World-Will. But is this the whole story? No; if we ever get our spiritual freedom, we shall, I think, not neglecting this caprice which Schopenhauer found at the heart of things, still see that the world is divine and spiritual, not so much in spite of this capriciousness, as just because of it. Caprice isn’t all of reason; but reason needs facts and passions to conquer and to rationalize, in order to become triumphantly rational. The spirit exists by accepting and by triumphing over the tragedy of the world. Restlessness, longing, grief, — these are evils, fatal evils, and they are everywhere in the world; but the spirit must be strong enough to endure them. In this strength is the solution. And, after all, it is just endurance that is the essence of spirituality. Resignation, then, is indeed part of the truth, — resignation, that is, of any hope of a final and private happiness. We resign in order to be ready to endure. But courage is the rest of the truth, — a hearty defiance of the whole hateful pang and agony of the will, a binding of the strong man by being stronger than he, a making of life once for all our divine game, where the passions are the mere chessmen that we move in carrying out our plan, and where the plan is a spiritual victory over Satan. Let us thank Schopenhauer, then, for at least this, that in his