But the world suffers, and suffering is the sense of the flesh of
reality; it is the spirit's sense of its mass and substance; it is the
self's sense of its own tangibility; it is immediate reality.
Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it
is only suffering that makes us persons. And suffering is universal,
suffering is that which unites all us living beings together; it is the
universal or divine blood that flows through us all. That which we call
will, what is it but suffering?
And suffering has its degrees, according to the depth of its
penetration, from the suffering that floats upon the sea of appearances
to the eternal anguish, the source of the tragic sense of life, which
seeks a habitation in the depths of the eternal and there awakens
consolation; from the physical suffering that contorts our bodies to the
religious anguish that flings us upon the bosom of God, there to be
watered by the divine tears.
Anguish is something far deeper, more intimate, and more spiritual than
suffering. We are wont to feel the touch of anguish even in the midst of
that which we call happiness, and even because of this happiness itself,
to which we cannot resign ourselves and before which we tremble. The
happy who resign themselves to their apparent happiness, to a transitory
happiness, seem to be as men without substance, or, at any rate, men who
have not discovered this substance in themselves, who have not touched
it.
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