a universal conspiracy for hiding sadness

Cheerful thoughts to be found in Amiel's Journal:

I gazed into the great implacable abyss in which are swallowed up all those phantoms which call themselves living beings. I saw that the living are but apparitions hovering for a moment over the earth, made out of the ashes of the dead, and swiftly re-absorbed by eternal night, as the will-o'-the-wisp sinks into the marsh. The nothingness of our joys, the emptiness of our existence, and the futility of our ambitions, filled me with a quiet disgust. From regret to disenchantment I floated on to Buddhism, to universal weariness. Ah, the hope of a blessed immortality would be better worth having !

With what different eyes one looks at life at ten, at twenty, at thirty, at sixty ! Those who live alone are specially conscious of this psychological metamorphosis. Another thing, too, astonishes them ; it is the universal conspiracy which exists for hiding the sadness of the world, for making men forget suffering, sickness, and death, for smothering the wails and sobs which issue from every house, for painting and beautifying the hideous face of reality.

Is it out of tenderness for childhood and youth, or is it simply from fear, that we are thus careful to veil the sinister truth ? Or is it from a sense of equity ? and does life contain as much good as evil -perhaps more ? However it may be, men feed themselves rather upon illusion than upon truth. Each one unwinds his own special reel of hope, and as soon as he has come to the end of it he sits him down to die, and lets his sons and his grandsons begin the same experience over again. We all pursue happiness, and happiness escapes the pursuit of all.