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Parthagica Directory 06
Page 08
In either case the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to be found out sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockery save by reflecting that everything must have its meat in due season, and that meat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths by giving everything as meat in due season to something else. This is like the Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is the way of the world, and as every animal must contribute in kind to the picnic of the universe, one does not see what better arrangement could be made than the providing each race with a hereditary fallacy, which shall in the end get it into a scrape, but which shall generally stand the wear and tear of life for some time. "Do ut des" is the writing on all flesh to him that eats it; and no creature is dearer to itself than it is to some other that would devour it.
The awful penalty of success is the haunting dread of subsequent failure, and even sadder still is the fact that in striving eagerly to attain an end, we are apt to lose the sense of the purpose which inspired us. This is more drearily true of the pursuit of money than of anything else. I could name several friends of my own who started in business with the perfectly definite and avowed intention of making a competence in order that they might live as they desired to live; that they might travel, read, write, enjoy a secure leisure. But when they had done exactly what they meant to do, the desires were all atrophied. They could not give up their work; they felt it would be safer to have a larger margin, they feared they might be bored, they had made friends, and did not wish to sever the connection, they must provide a little more for their families: the whole programme had insensibly altered. Even so they were still planning to escape from something--from some boredom or anxiety or dread.
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