Nature favours nothing in particular.  So everything has its advantage and disadvantage as well.  What one gains on the one hand one loses on the other.  The ox is competent in drawing a heavy cart, but he is absolutely incompetent in catching mice.  A shovel is fit for digging, but not for ear-picking.  Aeroplanes are good for aviation, but not for navigation.  Silkworms feed on mulberry leaves and make silk from it, but they can do nothing with other leaves.  Thus everything has its own use or a mission appointed by Nature; and if we take advantage of it, nothing is useless, but if not, all are useless.  ’The neck of the crane may seem too long to some idle on-lookers, but there is no surplus in it.  The limbs of the tortoise may appear too short, but there is no shortcoming in them.’  The centipede, having a hundred limbs, can find no useless feet; the serpent, having no foot, feels no want.

7.  The Law of Balance in Life.

It is also the case with human affairs.  Social positions high or low, occupations spiritual or temporal, work rough or gentle, education perfect or imperfect, circumstances needy or opulent, each has its own advantage as well as disadvantage.  The higher the position the graver the responsibilities, the lower the rank the lighter the obligation.  The director of a large bank can never be so careless as his errand-boy who may stop on the street to throw a stone at a sparrow; nor can the manager of a large plantation have as good a time on a rainy day as his day-labourers who spend it in gambling.  The accumulation of wealth is always accompanied by its evils; no Rothschild nor Rockefeller can be happier than a poor pedlar.

A mother of many children may be troubled by her noisy little ones and envy her sterile friend, who in turn may complain of her loneliness; but if they balance what they gain with what they lose, they will find the both sides are equal.  The law of balance strictly forbids one’s monopoly of happiness.  It applies its scorpion whip to anyone who is given to pleasures.  Joy in extremity lives next door to exceeding sorrow.  “Where there is much light,” says Goethe, “shadow is deep.”  Age, withered and disconsolate, lurks under the skirts of blooming youth.  The celebration of birthday is followed by the commemoration of death.  Marriage might be supposed to be the luckiest event in one’s life, but the widow’s tears and the orphan’s sufferings also might be its outcome.  But for the former the latter can never be.  The death of parents is indeed the unluckiest event in the son’s life, but it may result in the latter’s inheritance of an estate, which is by no means unlucky.  The disease of a child may cause its parents grief, but it is a matter of course that it lessens the burden of their livelihood.  Life has its pleasures, but also its pains.  Death has no pleasure of life, but also none of its pain.  So that if we balance their smiles and tears, life and death are equal.  It is not wise for us, therefore, to commit suicide while the terms of our life still remain, nor to fear death when there is no way of avoiding it.