For, actually, his contemplations had made him of a sad heart, inducing in him that melancholy--Tristitia--which even the monastic moralists have held to be of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of Desidia or Inactivity.

Resignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient bearing of the burden of a sad heart:--Yes! this belonged doubtless to the situation of an honest thinker upon the world.

Only, in this case there seemed to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is.

And there could be no true Theodice in that; no real accommodation of the world as it is, to the divine pattern of the Logos, the eternal reason, over against it.

It amounted to a tolerance of evil.
The soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little understand, yet prospereth on the journey: [52] If thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of evil with thee therein.
If thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with thee--nothing to be afraid of: Whatever is, is right; as from the hand of one dispensing to every man according to his desert: If reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require?
Dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits?
That which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole.
The profit of the whole,--that was sufficient!+ -- Links, in a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to see evil anywhere, might lack, after all, the secret of genuine cheerfulness.