In proportion as we become wise, we escape from some of our instinctive destinies. Every man who is able to diminish the blind force of instinct in himself, diminishes around him the force of destiny. Destiny has remained a barbarian; it cannot reach souls that have grown nobler than itself. That is why tragic poets rarely permit a sage to appear on the scene; no drama ever happens among sages, and the presence of the sage paralyses destiny. There is not a single tragedy in which fatality reigns; what the hero combats in all of them is not destiny, but wisdom. If predestination exists, it only exists in character; and character can be modified. Fatality obeys those who dare give it orders, and therefore there is no inevitable tragedy.
The shadow of destiny casts an enormous shadow over the valley it seems to drown in darkness, and in this shadow we are born; but many men can travel beyond it; and those who cannot may find happiness in wisdom which no catastrophe can reach.
But what is wisdom? Consciousness of oneself; knowledge of oneself. It is not reason: reason opens the door to wisdom. It is from the threshold of reason that all sages set out; but they travel in different directions. Reason gives birth to justice; wisdom gives birth to goodness. There is no love in reason; there is much in wisdom. Not reason, but love, must be the glass in which the flower of genuine wisdom is cultivated. It is true that reason is found at the root of wisdom; but wisdom is not the flower of reason. Wisdom is the light of love; love, and you will be wise.
And does the sage never suffer? He suffers; and suffering is one of the elements of his wisdom. It is not suffering we must avoid, but the discouragement--it brings to those who receive it like a master. People suffer little by suffering itself; they suffer enormously by the way they accept it. Misfortune comes to us, but it only does what it is ordered to do.
What is it that decides what suffering shall bring to us? Not reason, but our anterior life, which has formed our soul. Nothing is more just than grief; and our life waits till the hour strikes, as the mould awaits the molten bronze, to pay us our wage.
What if it be true that the sage be punished instead of being rewarded! What soul could be called good if it were sure of its reward? And who shall measure the happiness or unhappiness of the sage? When we put unhappiness in one side of the scales, each one of us lays down in the other the idea he has of happiness. The savage will lay alcohol, gunpowder, and feathers there; the civilised man gold and days of intoxication; but the sage will lay down a thousand things that we do not see, his whole soul perhaps, and even the unhappiness which he will have purified.