My mind can find no place, nor
rest a moment, in the present; it is irresistibly repelled by it. My
whole life streams irrepressibly on toward the future and better.
Am I only to eat and to drink that I may hunger and thirst again,
and again eat and drink, until the grave, yawning beneath my feet,
swallows me up, and I myself spring up as food from the ground? Am I
to beget beings like myself, that they also may eat and drink and die,
and leave behind them beings like themselves, who shall do the same
that I have done? To what purpose this circle which perpetually
returns into itself; this game forever recommencing, after the same
manner, in which everything is born but to perish, and perishes but
to be born again as it was; this monster which forever devours itself
that it may produce itself again, and which produces itself that it
may again devour itself?
Never can this be the destination of my being and of all being. There
must be something which exists because it has been brought forth, and
which now remains and can never be brought forth again after it has
been brought forth once. And this, that is permanent, must beget
itself amid the mutations of the perishing, and continue amid those
mutations, and be borne along unhurt upon the waves of time.
As yet our race wrings with difficulty its sustenance and its
continuance from reluctant Nature. As yet the larger portion of
mankind are bowed down their whole life long by hard labor, to procure
sustenance for themselves and the few who think for them.
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