accumulated circumstances; they cannot stay, they must go,
their necks are in the slave's ring, they are beaten like
seaweed against the solid walls of fact. In ancient times,
Xerxes, the king of kings, looking down upon his myriads, wept to think that
in a hundred years not one of them would be left. Where will be these
millions of to-day in a hundred years? But, further than that, let us ask,
Where then will be the sum and outcome of their labour? If they wither away
like summer grass, will not at least a result be left which those of a
hundred years hence may be the better for? No, not one jot! There will not
be any sum or outcome or result of this ceaseless labour and movement; it
vanishes in the moment that it is done, and in a hundred years nothing will
be there, for nothing is there now. There will be no more sum or result than
accumulates from the motion of a revolving cowl on a housetop. Nor do they
receive any more sunshine during their lives, for they are unconscious of
the sun.

I used to come and stand near the apex of the promontory of pavement which
juts out towards the pool of life; I still go there to ponder. Burning in
the sky, the sun shone on me as when I rested in the narrow valley carved in
prehistoric time.
Burning in the sky, I can never forget the sun. The heat of summer is dry
there as if the light carried an impalpable dust; dry, breathless heat that
will not let the skin respire, but
swathes up the dry fire in the blood. But beyond the heat and light, I felt
the presence of the sun as I felt it in the solitary valley, the presence of
the resistless forces of the
universe; the sun burned in the sky as I stood and pondered. Is there any
theory, philosophy, or creed, is there any system or
culture, any formulated method able to meet and satisfy each separate item
of this agitated pool of human life? By which they may be guided, by which