It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.

But we, we have no sense of direction; impetus Is all we have; we do not proceed, we only Roll down the mountain, Like disbalanced boulders, crushing before us many Delicate springing things, whose plan it was to grow.

O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!