Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Company languages

"I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I
myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body
is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I
say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the
rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I
find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I
am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is
given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of
the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see
nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a
shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is
that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I
cannot escape.
"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that,
in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the
hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall
be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty.
And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life
without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find
some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step
to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this
care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event,
and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my
future state."
Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who
would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have
recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put
him?

from the town; and men only seek conversation and
entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.
But, on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our
ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is
one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal
condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it
closely.
Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things
which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the
world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel,
if he be without diversion and be left to consider and reflect on what he
is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall
into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally,
of death and inevitable disease; so that, if he be without what is called
diversion, he is unhappy and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who
plays and diverts himself.
Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war and high posts, are
so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that
men imagine true bliss to consist in money