This must be understood to mean that he is increasingly incapable of controlling his technics, or rather of controlling his own control . This control of his own control, which is nothing else than the expression on the plane of active life of what I have called thought at one remove, cannot find its centre or its support anywhere except in recollection. The more the sense of the ontological tends to disappear, the more unlimited become the claims of the mind which has lost it to a kind of cosmic governance, because it is less and less capable of examining its own credentials to the exercise of such dominion. It has become a domain reserved for the moralist. Faithfulness is, in reality, the exact opposite of inert conformism.
Presence is a mystery in the exact measure in which it is presence.
This seems to me to have almost inexhaustible consequences, if only for the relationships between the living and the dead. Unavailability is invariably rooted in some measure of alienation. Such cracks are repaired almost at once. I may be preoccupied with my health, my fortune, or even with my inward perfection . Pessimism is rooted in the same soil as the inability to be at the disposal of others.