In the very case you spoke
of, the little conscript, torn from his home to fight a tyrant's
battles, hectored and ill-treated, and then shot down upon some crowded
battle-field, that is precisely the discipline which at that point of
time his soul needs, and the blessedness of which he afterwards
perceives; sometimes discipline is swift and urgent, sometimes it is
slow and lingering: but all experience is exactly apportioned to the
quality of which each soul is in need. The only reason why there seems
to be an element of chance in it, is that the whole thing is so
inconceivably vast and prolonged; and our happiness and our progress
alike depend upon our realising at every moment that the smallest joy
and the most trifling pleasure, as well as the tiniest ailment or the
most subtle sorrow, are just the pieces of experience which we are meant
at that moment to use and make our own. No one, not even God, can force
us to understand this; we have to perceive it for ourselves, and to live
in the knowledge of it."
"Yes," I said, "it is true, all that. My heart tells me so; but it is
very wonderful and mysterious, all the same.
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