December 16

It doth not yet appear what we shall be.

SURELY the aim of a true philosophy must lie, not in futile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man to the circumstances in which he chances to find himself, but in the maintenance of a kind of ingenuous discontent, in the face of the very highest achievement; the unclouded and receptive soul quitting the world finally, with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered it still unimpaired, and going on its blind way at last with the consciousness of an enigma in all that, as its pledge of something further to come. Marius seemed to understand how one might look back upon life here, and its excellent visions, as but the portion of a racecourse left behind him by a still swift runner; for a moment, he felt a curiosity and ardour, with dim trouble as of imminent vision, to enter upon a future, the possibilities of which seemed so large.

WALTER PATER, Marius the Epicurean

AND DEATH