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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: IV
If we go now and look on these innumerable epitaphs, the pathos and
the irony are strangely fled. They do not stand merely to the
dead, these foolish monuments; they are pillars and legends set up
to glorify the difficult but not desperate life of man. This
ground is hallowed by the heroes of defeat.
I see the indifferent pass before my friend's last resting-place;
pause, with a shrug of pity, marvelling that so rich an argosy had
sunk. A pity, now that he is done with suffering, a pity most
uncalled for, and an ignorant wonder. Before those who loved him,
his memory shines like a reproach; they honour him for silent
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