Often a man grows weary of being at
home and goes forth from his stately halls and suddenly returns, since he
perceives that it is not a whit better outside. He speeds his ponies and rushes
to his villa as though he were in hot haste to take help to a blazing house,
and as soon as he has reached the threshold he at once yawns, or sinks heavily
to sleep and seeks forgetfulness, or even hurries to the city again. In this
way each one flees from himself- and the self he cannot escape clings to him
against his will- and hates himself, since in his sickness he does not know the
cause of the complaint. Each one if he saw this well, would abandon affairs and
seek first to know the nature of the universe, since the issue at stake is the
condition of all time, not of one hour, all the existence waiting and to be
expected after death.
