“You are not boring me—yet. And if you can prove what you say, I shall not mind even if you bore me. But I must tell you, first of all, that, to me, the world seems absolutely without a meaning and life without an aim. I mean, of course, the general life of the world, which implies, as far as I can see, general suffering. If suffering did people good, then I could understand that we were placed here to grow and develop; but suffering and poverty, as far as I can see, only stunt and twist and spoil everything they touch.”
“Precisely.”
“Then, if you admit that, you must admit that the meaning and aim of the world is far from being glorious.”
“Never. That is what I wish to disprove.”
“Then disprove it.”
The Growth of the World
“TELL me,” I said. “Why is it that an ordinary human being placed before a flower sees only a flower and nothing of the wonder that is in it?”
“Because flowers are so common.”
“More than that—because a flower is of such slow growth. If one could see a seed sprouting, a stalk rising, a bud forming, bursting, and expanding all in five minutes, the wonder of the thing would bring one on one’s knees. The world is just the same. We do not see the splendour and magnificence and meaning of it, because the growth has been so slow, because every-day jargon has blinded our eyes, and scientific jargon has dulled the poetic perception of the miracle in its entirety. It is by looking at bits of the world that men have come to confusion, instead of fixing their eyes on the world from its very beginning.”