But man’s difficulty is, that he can’t have life for the asking. “He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it him: even length of days for ever and ever.” There’s a pretty motto for the tomb! It isn’t length of days for ever and ever that a man wants. It is strong life within himself, while he lives. But how to get it? You may be as healthy as a cow, and yet have fear inside you, because your life is not enough. We know, really, that we can’t have life for the asking, nor find it by seeking, nor get it by striving. The river flows into us from behind and below. We must turn our backs to it, and go ahead. The faster we go ahead, the stronger the river rushes into us. The moment we turn round to embrace the river of life, it ebbs away, and we see nothing but a stony fiumara. We must go ahead. But which way is ahead? We don’t know. We only know that, continuing in the way we are going, the river of life flows feebler and feebler in us, and we lose all sense of vital direction. We begin to talk about vitamines. We become idiotic. We cunningly prepare our own suicide. This is the philosophic problem: to find the way ahead. _Allons!_--there is no road before us. Plato said that ahead, ahead was the perfect Idea, gleaming in the brow of the dragon. We have pretty well caught up with the perfect Idea, and we find it a sort of vast, white, polished tomb-stone. If the mouth of the serpent is the open grave, into which the tail disappears, then three cheers for the Logos, and down she goes. We children of a later Pa, know that Life is real, Life is earnest, and the Grave is not its Goal. Let us side-step. All goals become graves. Every goal is a grave, when you get there. Well, I came out of an egg-cell, like an amœba, and I go into the grave. I can’t help it. It’s not my fault, and it’s not my business. I don’t want eternal life, nor length of days for ever and ever. Nothing so long drawn out. I give up all that sort of stuff. Yet while I live, I want to live. Death, no doubt, solves its own problems. Let Life solve the problem of living. “Teach me to live that so I may Rise glorious at the Judgment Day.” I have no desire to rise glorious at any Judgment Day, when the serpent finally chokes himself with his own tail. “Teach me to live that I may Go gaily on from day to day.” Nay, in all the world, I feel the life-urge weakening. It may be, there are too many people alive. I feel it is, because there is too much automatic consciousness and self-consciousness in the world. We can’t live by loving life, alone. Life is like a capricious mistress: the more you woo her the more she despises you. You have to get up and go to something more interesting. Then she’ll pelt after you. Life is the river, darkly sparkling, that enters into us from behind, when we set our faces towards the unknown. Towards some goal!!!