The author of a philosophic work is, however, always dissatisfied, for he feels that his book or treatise hardly suffices for an instant, but immediately reveals itself as more or less insufficient. For this reason, to any philosopher, as to any poet, the only works of his own that bring true satisfaction are those that he has still to do. Thus every philosopher and every true artist dies unsatisfied, like Karl Marx, who, when asked in the last year of his life to prepare a complete edition of his works, replied that he had yet to write them. He alone is satisfied who at a certain moment ceases to think and takes to admiring himself, that is to say, the corpse of himself as a thinker, and is careful, not of art or philosophy, but of his own person. Yet to no one can even this give the satisfaction he imagines, for life is no less voracious and insatiable than thought. In any case, to be satisfied, the author must become philosophically immobile in a _formula,_ and the reader must content himself with this formula. Thoughts must become "obtuse and deaf," as Leibnitz called them, who defined such a spiritual condition as _psittacism._ The only consolation left to one who does not become immobile is that of reflecting, like Socrates, that his discourses will not be sterile, but fruitful. Other discourses will spring from them in his own soul and in the soul of others, in whom he has sown the _seeds_[2] He will console himself with the thought that philosophy, like life, is infinite. [Sidenote: _Surpassing and continuous progress of philosophy._] The infinity of philosophy, its continuous changing, is not a doing and an undoing, but a continuous _surpassing of itself._ The new philosophic proposition is made possible only by the old; the old lives eternally in the new that follows it and in the new that will follow that again and make old that other which is new. This suffices to reassure those minds which are easily led astray and inclined to lament the vanity of things. Where everything is vain, nothing is vain; fullness consists precisely in that perpetual becoming vain, which is the perpetual birth of reality, the eternal becoming. Nobody renounces love because love is transitory, nor abandons thinking because his thought will give place to other thoughts. Love passes, but generates other beings, who will love. Thought passes, but generates other thoughts, which, in their turn, will excite other thoughts. In the world of thought also, we survive in our own children: in our children who contradict us, substitute themselves for us and bury us, not always with due piety. [Sidenote: _Meaning of the eternity of philosophy._]