O To be free of the turmoil of life, to purify our souls of the poisons it has left in us, cleanse ourselves of its spots and blemishes, take our stand somewhere beyond the tumult and look back, pondering, remembering! This impulsive yearning often flares up in us and impels our minds to go seeking. Is there not, somewhere, a place of refuge and repose? Must not such a place exist as the logical complement to life, the goal toward which all this travail must lead?
As our cold thought disintegrates this metaphysical ideal and even shows that the notion of another world and of heaven itself is contradictory and empty, we set about constructing less pretentious havens of retreat: some day we will retire from business, from politics, from the quarrels and ambitions of active life; and pass a comfortable old age with a few friends and many books and the people we love
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