The universality of sin necessitates the universality of purification, which in its turn requires pain to be universal, that the whole human race may be purified in its mysterious waters. This explains why all men born suffer from their birth to their death. Pain is the inseparable companion of life in this obscure valley, filled with our sighs, deafened with our lamentations, and moistened with our tears. Every man is a suffering being, and everything not painful is strange to him. Continue reading →