In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.

Hawthorne suggests that human psychology contains a kind of built-in mercy: in the very moment of acute suffering, consciousness is partially numbed or narrowed, so the full measure of pain is not grasped until afterward. The “present torture” is survivable because the mind cannot simultaneously endure and fully comprehend it; only later does the “pang that rankles” translate the experience into lasting knowledge, memory, and sometimes guilt or regret. The remark fits Hawthorne’s recurring interest in the aftereffects of moral and emotional crises—how trauma, sin, or shame often becomes most vivid in recollection and consequence rather than in the instant of action.