"You allow, then, that you feel some occasional desire for a more active
and animated life?"

"Nay," answered Aram; "that is scarcely a fair corollary from my remark.
I may, at times, feel the weariness of existence--the tedium vitae; but I
know well that the cause is not to be remedied by a change from
tranquillity to agitation. The objects of the great world are to be
pursued only by the excitement of the passions. The passions are at once
our masters and our deceivers;--they urge us onward, yet present no limit
to our progress. The farther we proceed, the more dim and shadowy grows
the goal. It is impossible for a man who leads the life of the world, the
life of the passions, ever to experience content. For the life of the
passions is that of a perpetual desire; but a state of content is the
absence of all desire. Thus philosophy has become another name for mental
quietude; and all wisdom points to a life of intellectual indifference,
as the happiest which earth can bestow."

"This may be true enough," said Lester, reluctantly; "but--"

"But what?"

"A something at our hearts--a secret voice--an involuntary impulse--
rebels against it, and points to action--action, as the true sphere of
man."

A slight smile curved the lip of the Student; he avoided, however, the
argument, and remarked,

"Yet, if you think so, the world lies before you; why not return to it?"