tence is complete only when it reckons to the good an
incalculable number of petty incidents, each more insignificant than the
last. Why lose time in thinking or dreaming? We must live at fever heat,
must agitate, and be infatuated for inanities, must create imaginary
desires and torments.

The thoughtful mind, prone to contemplation and admiration of the
beauties of Nature, is ill at ease in this perpetual vortex that
swallows everything--satisfaction, in a life that one has not time to
relish; love of the beautiful, that one views with indifference; it is a
whirlpool that perpetually hides Truth from us, forgotten forever at the
bottom of her well.

And why are our lives thus absorbed in merely material interests? To
satisfy our pride and vanity! To make ourselves slaves to chimeras! If
the Moon were inhabited, and if her denizens could see us plainly
enough to note and analyze the details of human existence on the surface
of our planet, it would be curious and perhaps a little humiliating for
us, to see their statistics. What! we should say, is this the sum of our
lives? Is it for this that we struggle, and suffer, and die? Truly it is
futile to give ourselves such trouble.

And yet the remedy is simple, within the power of every one; but one
does not think of it just because it is too easy, although it has the
immense advantage of lifting us out of the miseries of this weary world
toward the inexpressible happiness that must always awaken in us with
the knowledge of the Truth: we need only open our eyes to see, and to
look out. Only--one hardly ever thinks of it, and it is easier to let
one's self be blinded by the illusion and false glamor of appearances.

Think what it would be to consecrate an hour each day to voluntary
participation in the harmonious Choir of Nature, to raise one's eyes
toward the Heavens, to share the lessons taught by the Pageant of the
Universe! But, no: there is no time, no time for the intellectual life,
no time to become attached to real interests, no time to pursue them.

Among the objects marshaled for us in the immense spectacle of Nature,
nothing without exception has struck the admiration and attention of
man as much as the Sun, the God of Light, the fecundating orb, without
which our planet and its life would never have issued from nonentity,
_the visible image of the invisible god_, as said Cicero, and the poets
of antiquity. And yet how many beyond the circle of those likely to