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That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.

I heard too many answers, I met too many gods. Abroad they call on Christ, but if you fare southward long enough it is Muhammad; and eastward it is Gautama Buddha, save where they say the world is a dream of Brahm, or offer to a host of gods and ghosts and elves like ours in these Northlands. And almost every man I asked told me that his folk know the truth while the rest are benighted. Could I but hear a word I felt even half sure of—

He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy.

He did not share the widespread present-day faith in astrology. It seemed likeliest to him that sheer accident ruled the world.

Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom?

Be calm. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.

“Are you that afraid to die?”

“No. I simply like to live.”

“Do you actually hope to convert the whole of mankind?”

“Belay that! Anyhow, if you mean, Do we hope to make everybody into copies of us? The answer is, No. Mind, I’m not in Parliament or Admiralty, but I follow debates and I read the philosophers. One trouble with the old machine culture was that, by its nature, it did force people to become more and more alike. Not only did this fail in the end—disastrously—but to the extent it succeeded, it was a worse disaster.” Lohannaso smote the rail with a mighty fist. “Damnation, Thomas! We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!”

Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.

The old man murmured: “Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.”

We're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?

“I really liked that girl.”

“Not loved, evidently,” I observed.

“N-n-no. I supposed not. Though what is love, anyway? Doesn’t it have so infinitely many kinds and degrees and mutations and quantum jumps that— Never mind.”