Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, Benjamin West

“TRAVEL the length and breadth of the land, cast your eyes behind and before you, devour space and time, and you shall find nothing in the dominion of men, but what is stated here — a pain which never abates, and an increasing lamentation. And this pain, voluntarily accepted, is the measure of all greatness, because there is no greatness without sacrifice, and sacrifice is merely pain voluntarily accepted. Those whom the world calls heroes, are they who, when transfixed with a sword of pain, voluntarily accepted the pain with its sword. Those whom the Church calls saints, are they who accepted all pains, those of the spirit as well as those of the flesh. The saints are those who, when beseiged by avarice, laid aside all the treasures of the world ; who, when solicited by gluttony, remained sober; who, when burned by lust, holily accepted the combat, and were chaste ; who, when entering on the battle, were assailed by filthy thoughts, and remained pure; who rose so high by humility that they conquered pride ; who, when saddened by another’s prosperity, made such an effort, as to convert their base sadness into holy joy ; who flung to earth the ambition which raised them to the stars; who changed their idleness into diligence;  who, when weighed down by sadness, gave a bill of divorce to their sadness, and rose by a generous effort to spiritual joy ; who, when enamoured of themselves, renounced their self-love for love of others, and with heroic abnegation offered their hfe for them in perfect holocaust.

“The human race has been unanimous in acknowledging the sanctifying virtue of pain. Hence we find that man in all times, in all countries, and among all nations, has always paid worship and homage to great misfortunes. CEdipus is grander in the day of his misfortune than in the period of his glory ; the world would have forgotten his name if the divine wrath had not hurled him from his throne. The melancholy beauty in the countenance of Germanicus comes from the misfortune which overtook him in the spring-time of life, and from that beautiful death.he died, far from his beloved country and the atmosphere of Rome. Marius, who is no more than a cruel man when elevated by victory, is sublime when he falls from his lofty eminence into the mud of the marshes. Mithridates appears grander than Pompey, and Hannibal than Scipio. Man, without knowing why, always inclines to the side of the con- quered—misfortune appears to him more beautiful than victory. Socrates is less grand by the life he lived than by the death he died ; immortality comes to him, not from having known how to live, but from having died heroically—he owes less to philosophy than to his hemlock. …

“Pain establishes a certain equality between all those who suffer, which is to establish it between all men, for all suffer : by pleasure we are separated, by pain united in fraternal bonds. Pain removes the superfluous, and gives us what we want, and establishes a most perfect equilibrium in man : the proud man does not suffer without losing some of his pride, nor the ambitious man some of his ambition, nor the passionate man some of his anger, nor the impure man some of his impurity. Pain is sovereign in extinguishing the fires of the passions. At the same time that it removes what injures us, it gives us what ennobles us—the hard-hearted do not suffer without feeling themselves more inclined to compassion, nor the disdainful without feeling more humble, nor the voluptuous without feeling more chaste. The violent become tamed, the weak fortified. No one comes out of that furnace of pain worse than he entered : the greater number come out with sublime virtues they knew not of. One goes in impious, and comes out religious ; another avaricious, and comes out an almsgiver; another without ever having wept, and comes out with the gift of tears ; another heart-hardened, and comes out merciful. In pain there is a something fortifying, manly, and profound, which is the origin of all heroism and of all greatness ; no one has felt its mysterious contact without improving: the child acquires by pain the vitality of youth, youth the maturity and gravity of men, men the bravery of heroes, heroes the sanctity of saints.”

— Juan Donoso Cortés,  Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism – Considered in Their Fundamental Principles (M. H. Gill & Son, 1879)

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