then there would be no human resolution to human problems."

"Our lives serve as a spectator sport to the gods, then?" I inquired of
him.

"I am afraid not," he said, "It is much more serious than that. The
Greeks were not all wrong, you know."

"Who else, I wonder."

"Not many," he sighed, "But tell me, are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Then I will begin. The understanding of life begins with the
understanding of physical existence," Onan said, "And by physical
existence I mean the quality of being materially animated. Not to
confuse it with consciousness, which is the ability to think and reason,
it is rather the realm in which one has substance and continuity. I will
call the elements of physical being time and matter, those words
representing widely known concepts. Matter provides the raw substance
and time gives those lifeless objects a plane of being to exist in.
Without time, matter can do nothing except sit in a sterile state, in a
vacuum in which nothing could occur; and without matter, time would
flow, but nothing would move with it. Thus, the basis of physical
existence is time and matter, each being useless separately, yet
together being the perfect combination of a tangible object and the
fluid, forward movement to animate it. Imagine it as a three-dimensional
painting, matter given depth by time."