does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the
end, and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then, it
is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was
never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it
is over.

At the same time it is a wonderful thing that, in the world of human
beings as in that of animals in general, this manifold restless motion
is produced and kept up by the agency of two simple impulses--hunger
and the sexual instinct; aided a little, perhaps, by the influence of
boredom, but by nothing else; and that, in the theatre of life, these
suffice to form the _primum mobile_ of how complicated a machinery,
setting in motion how strange and varied a scene!

On looking a little closer, we find that inorganic matter presents
a constant conflict between chemical forces, which eventually works
dissolution; and on the other hand, that organic life is impossible
without continual change of matter, and cannot exist if it does not
receive perpetual help from without. This is the realm of _finality_;
and its opposite would be _an infinite existence_, exposed to no
attack from without, and needing nothing to support it; [Greek: haei
hosautos dn], the realm of eternal peace; [Greek: oute giguomenon oute
apollumenon], some timeless, changeless state, one and undiversified;
the negative knowledge of which forms the dominant note of the
Platonic philosophy. It is to some such state as this that the denial
of the will to live opens up the way.

The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked
at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to
be found in them, unless you stand some distance off. So, to gain