"What am I," he cries, "in the eyes of the eternal hills? I am relatively unimportant! By George, I shouldn't be surprised if I were a miserable atom! Yes, that's what I am! I am a frail, wretched thing, created but to be consumed. My life is but a day. I am a poor, two-legged nonentity, trotting about the surface of an enormous ball. I am filled with egotism and self-interest. I call myself civilized—and why? Because I have learned to make sounds through my mouth, and have assigned certain meanings to these sounds; because I have learned to mark down certain symbols, to represent these sounds; and because, with my sounds and symbols, I can maintain a ragged interchange of ragged thought with other men, getting myself, for the most part, beautifully misunderstood.
"Of what else is my life composed? Of the search for something I call 'pleasure' and something else I call 'success,' which is represented by piles of little yellow metal disks that I designate by the silly-sounding word, 'money.' I spend six days in the week in search of money, and on the seventh day I relax and read the Sunday newspapers, or put on my silk hat and go to church, where I call God's attention to myself in every way I can, praying to Him with prayers which have to be written for me because I haven't brains enough to make a good prayer of my own; singing hymns to Him in a voice which ought never to be raised in song; telling Him that I know He watches over me; putting a little metal disk, of small denomination, in the plate for Him; then putting on my shiny hat again—which I know pleases Him very much—going home and eating too much dinner."
That is the way man thinks about himself upon a mountain top. Naturally he can only stand it for a little while before his contracting ego begins to shriek in pain.
Then man says: "I have enjoyed the view. I will note the fact in the visitors' book if there happens to be one, after which I will retire from this high elevation to the world below."
Going down the mountain he begins to say to himself: "What wonderful thoughts I have been thinking up there! I have had thoughts which very few other men are capable of thinking! I have a remarkable mind if I only take the time to use it!"
So, as he goes down, his ego keeps on swelling up again until it not only reaches its normal size, but becomes larger than ever, because the man now believes that, in addition to all he was before, he has become a philosopher.
"I must write a book!" he says to himself. "I must give these remarkable ideas of mine to the world!"
And, as you see, he sometimes does it.
The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place and the society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture