Love, in a word, is
resigned despair.
That which the mathematicians call the problem of maxima and minima,
which is also called the law of economy, is the formula for all
existential--that is, passional--activity. In material mechanics and in
social mechanics, in industry and in political economy, every problem
resolves itself into an attempt to obtain the greatest possible
resulting utility with the least possible effort, the greatest income
with the least expenditure, the most pleasure with the least pain. And
the terrible and tragic formula of the inner, spiritual life is either
to obtain the most happiness with the least love, or the most love with
the least happiness. And it is necessary to choose between the one and
the other, and to know that he who approaches the infinite of love, the
love that is infinite, approaches the zero of happiness, the supreme
anguish. And in reaching this zero he is beyond the reach of the misery
that kills. "Be not, and thou shalt be mightier than aught that is,"
said Brother Juan de los Angeles in one of his _Dialogos de la conquista
del reino de Dios_ (Dial. iii. 8).
And there is something still more anguishing than suffering. A man about
to receive a much-dreaded blow expects to have to suffer so severely
that he may even succumb to the suffering, and when the blow falls he
feels scarcely any pain; but afterwards, when he has come to himself and
is conscious of his insensibility, he is seized with terror, a tragic
terror, the most terrible of all, and choking with anguish he cries out:
"Can it be that I no longer exist?" Which would you find most
appalling--to feel such a pain as would deprive you of your senses on
being pierced through with a white-hot iron, or to see yourself thus
pierced through without feeling any pain? Have you never felt the
horrible terror of feeling yourself incapable of suffering and of tears?
Suffering tells us that we exist; suffering tells us that those whom we
love exist; suffering tells us that the world in which we live exists;
and suffering tells us that God exists and suffers; but it is the
suffering of anguish, the anguish of surviving and being eternal.
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