You Gentiles
sight, swifter motion, larger strength. This is but magnification, which leaves the element of the problem untouched. Can you conquer, not nature, but the nature of things?
For it is in the nature of things that the bitter problem resides. If science should double the span of human life, will the nature of life and death be altered? Will we not feel as mortal, as insignificant? Will we even be aware of living longer? If science should bridge the planets and the stars, will the new playground be larger than the old to those that live in it? You have found a whole world since the days of the Greeks: they lived on a tiny plot of earth, an ant-hill; and you have a gigantic globe to build on. What difference has it made? What significant conquest have you achieved? Not things but the nature of things baffle us, the dreadful circle, the eternal balance, for every gain a compensating loss, for every new revelation a new deception, for every new extension a loss of intensity.
The nature of things cannot be solved be-
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