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8 UG (Unter Grund)

 Bartle Library

Bartle Library, Binghamton University, New York

 

 

The old man, who had been advising me, replied;

 

“Every living human, which you currently are not, is united to you – – – if only by a single spider string. Each has a specific virtue, as life is manifest in a plant by its green leaves.

 

Therefore human beings do not know where knowledge of primary sensations comes from, or, attraction to the primary objects of appetite.

 

Likewise, these appetites were in you, as the drive in bees to make honey. This primary desire merits neither praise nor blame.

 

Now,  every other will to act on your own may be related to this one. The virtue, which allows judgement, is innate in you, and ought to guard the threshold of approval. This is the source from which the cause of merit, in you, derives, according to how it gathers and sifts good from evil desires.

 

Those who willed their base instincts, conceded to this innate freedom, and so left their principles behind.

 

Therefore, even if you suppose that every desire, which burned in you, rises out of necessity, the power to control it was within you. Take care to have that in mind.”

 

TOMORROW:  9 UG  (Unter Grund)

 

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