and the truth, and the virtue that lie underneath.  Happy and blessed hour, when wickedness stands forth revealed as goodness bereft of its guide; and treachery is seen to be loyalty, for ever astray from the highway of happiness; and hatred becomes only love, in poignant despair, that is digging its grave.  Then, unsuspected of any, shall it be with all those who are near the good man as it was with the penitent thief; into the humblest soul that will thus have been saved by a look, or a word, or a silence, shall the true happiness fall—­the happiness fate cannot touch; that brings to all men the oblivion it gave unto Socrates, and causes each one to forget, until nightfall, that the death—­giving cup had been drained ere the sun went down.

36.  The inner life, perhaps, is not what we deem it to be.  There are as many kinds of inner lives as there are of external lives.  Into these tranquil regions the smallest may enter as readily as he who is greatest, for the gate that leads thither is not always the gate of the intellect.  It often may happen that the man of vast knowledge shall knock at this gate in vain, reply being made from within by the man who knows nothing.  The inner life that is surest, most lasting, possessed of the uttermost beauty, must needs be the one that consciousness slowly erects in itself, with the aid of all that is purest in the soul.  And he is wise who has learned that this life should be nourished on every event of the day:  he to whom deceit or betrayal serves but to enhance his wisdom:  he in whom evil itself becomes fuel for the flame of love.  He is wise who at last sees in suffering only the light that it sheds on his soul; and whose eyes never rest on the shadow it casts upon those who have sent it towards him.  And wiser still is the man to whom sorrow and joy not only bring increase of consciousness, but also the knowledge that something exists superior to consciousness even.  To have reached this point is to reach the summit of inward life, whence at last we look down on the flames whose light has helped our ascent.  But not many can climb so high; and happiness may be achieved in the less ardent valley below, where the flames spring darkly to life.  And there are existences still more obscure which yet have their places of refuge.  There are some that instinctively fashion inward lives for themselves.  There are some that, bereft of initiative or of intelligence, never discover the path that leads into themselves, and are never aware of all that their refuge contains; and yet will their actions be wholly the same as the actions of those whose intellect weighs every treasure.  There are some who desire only good, though they know not wherefore they desire it, and have no suspicion that goodness is the one fixed star of loftiest consciousness.  The inner life begins when the soul becomes good, and not when the intellect ripens.  It is somewhat strange that this inner life can never be formed out of evil.  No inner life is for him whose soul