 Achieving this completeness requires practice, and art can provide us with that practice. When we encounter actual misfortune, we may find ourselves defenseless and easily overwhelmed. By contrast, “the artificial misfortune of the pathetic”—in other words, witnessing suffering in an artistic context—“finds us fully equipped, and, since it is merely imagined, the self-sufficient principle in our minds gets room to assert its absolute independence” (NA XX, 51/E 82). The more we practice this independence aesthetically, the more adept we will be at executing it in real life: witnessing tragedy as an art form, in short, is an “inoculation against unavoidable fate”; it allows us to practice sublime emotions such that when confronted with actual tragedy, we can react to it as if it were a performance and moderate our emotional responses accordingly. Of such an accomplishment, Schiller enthuses that “a human being can soar no higher!” (NA XX, 51/E 83).