If we separate ourselves so much from the interests of those around us
that we do not sympathize with them in their sufferings, we shut ourselves
out from sharing their happiness, and lose far more than we gain. If we
avoid sympathy and wrap ourselves round in a cold chain armor of
selfishness, we exclude ourselves from many of the greatest and purest
joys of life. To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also
the possibility of happiness.

Moreover, much of what we call evil is really good in disguise, and we
should not "quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor
overlook the mercies often bound up in them." [8] Pleasure and pain are,
as Plutarch says, the nails which fasten body and soul together. Pain is a
warning of danger, a very necessity of existence. But for it, but for the
warnings which our feelings give us, the very blessings by which we are
surrounded would soon and inevitably prove fatal. Many of those who have
not studied the question are under the impression that the more
deeply-seated portions of the body must be most sensitive. The very
reverse is the case. The skin is a continuous and ever-watchful sentinel,
always on guard to give us notice of any approaching danger; while the
flesh and inner organs, where pain would be without purpose, are, so long
as they are in health, comparatively without sensation.

"We talk," says Helps, "of the origin of evil;... but what is evil? We
mostly speak of sufferings and trials as good, perhaps, in their result;
but we hardly admit that they may be good in themselves. Yet they are
knowledge--how else to be acquired, unless by making men as gods, enabling
them to understand without experience. All that men go through may be
absolutely the best for them--no such thing as evil, at least in our
customary meaning of the word."