is no end of our inquisitions; our end is in the other world. 'Tis a
sign either that the mind has grown shortsighted when it is satisfied, or
that it has got weary. No generous mind can stop in itself; it will
still tend further and beyond its power; it has sallies beyond its
effects; if it do not advance and press forward, and retire, and rush and
wheel about, 'tis but half alive; its pursuits are without bound or
method; its aliment is admiration, the chase, ambiguity, which Apollo
sufficiently declared in always speaking to us in a double, obscure, and
oblique sense: not feeding, but amusing and puzzling us. 'Tis an
irregular and perpetual motion, without model and without aim; its
inventions heat, pursue, and interproduce one another:

Estienne de la Boetie; thus translated by Cotton:

"So in a running stream one wave we see
After another roll incessantly,
And as they glide, each does successively
Pursue the other, each the other fly
By this that's evermore pushed on, and this
By that continually preceded is:
The water still does into water swill,
Still the same brook, but different water still."

There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things,
and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but
comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of
authors there is great scarcity. Is it not the principal and most
reputed knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned? Is it not
the common and final end of all studies? Our opinions are grafted upon
one another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to the