It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger and trouble.... Nature never appeals to intel… - H. G. Wells

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.

Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the silence—the infinite and final Night of space.

And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Upperworld people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the eld. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same.

With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure.