PART V.. The Consolations of Affliction.

The Consolations of Affliction.

I. The Removal of Unhappiness.

Suffering is Unavoidable.――Where to Look for Consolation.――Two Consoling Reflections.――Advantage of a Multitude of Miseries.――The Habit of Unhappiness.――Some Require Ill Fortune.――Two Popular Methods of Consolation.――Talk It Over, and Why.――Our Strange Claim for Happiness.――The Tolerance of Suffering.――The Universal Panacea.――Look Before and After.――Deal Justly by Yourself.――How to Regard Incivility and Ingratitude.――Success Arising from Failures.――Resignation, Sympathy.――Remember Your Advantages.――Thoughts About Time and Death.

STROWINGS, pp. 248-280

II. The Inseparable Connection of Pleasure and Pain.

Pleasure Requires Pain, and Joy Sorrow.――The Words of Socrates.――Physiological Relations of Pleasure and Pain.――Their Analogy to Joy and Sorrow.――The Oneness of the Pleasure-Pain Sensation.――The Rhythm of Sensations and Emotions.――Pleasure Derived from Pain, Joy from Sorrow.――Quotation from Leigh Hunt.――Quotation from Sir Richard Steele.――Sadness the Best Preparative for Gladness.――Influence of Time on Pleasures and Pains.

STROWINGS, pp. 263-272

III. The Education of Suffering.

What is Suffering?――The Human Passion of Sorrow.――Sorrow as the Initiation into the Mysteries of Life.――The Noblest Prizes Won Only by Suffering.――It is the Highest Inspiration of Religion and Art.――It Alone Teaches the Elder Truths.――The Ministry of Grief.――The Sweetness of Departed Joys.――The Compensations of Loves that are Lost.――The Despair that is Divine.

STROWINGS, pp. 273-280