Glossa Time goes by, time comes along,All is old and all is new;What is right and what is wrong,You must think and ask of you;Have no hope and have no fear,Waves that rise can never hold;If they urge or if they cheer,You remain aloof and cold. To our sight a lot will glisten,Many sounds will reach our ear;Who could take the time to listenAnd remember all we hear?Keep aside from all that patter,Seek yourself, far from the throng When with loud and idle clatterTime goes by, time comes along.Nor forget the tongue of reasonOr its even scales depressWhen the moment, changing season,Wears the mask of happiness -It is born of reason's slumberAnd may last a wink as true:For the one who knows its numberAll is old and all is new.Be as to a play, spectator,As the world unfolds before:You will know the heart of matterShould they act two parts or four;When they cry or tear asunderFrom your seat enjoy alongAnd you'll learn from art to wonderWhat is right and what is wrong.Past and future, ever blending,Are the twin sides of same page:New start will begin with endingWhen you know to learn from age;All that was or be tomorrowWe have in the present, too;But what's vain and futile sorrowYou must think and ask of you;For the living cannot severFrom the means we've always had:Now, as years ago, and ever,Men are happy or are sad:Other masks, same play repeated;Diff'rent tongues, same words to hear;Of your dreams so often cheated,Have no hope and have no fear.Hope not when the villains clusterBy success and glory drawn:Fools with perfect lack of lusterWill outshine Hyperion!Fear it not, they'll push each otherTo reach higher in the fold,Do not side with them as brother,Waves that rise can never hold.Sounds of siren songs call steadyToward golden nets, astray;Life attracts you into eddiesTo change actors in the play;Steal aside from crowd and bustle,Do not look, seem not to hearFrom your path, away from hustle,If they urge or if they cheer;If they reach for you, go faster,Hold your tongue when slanders yell;Your advice they cannot master,Don't you know their measure well?Let them talk and let them chatter,Let all go past, young and old;Unattached to man or matter,You remain aloof and cold.You remain aloof and coldIf they urge or if they cheer;Waves that rise can never hold,Have no hope and have no fear;You must think and ask of youWhat is right and what is wrong;All is old and all is new,Time goes by, time comes along.
It is a special blessing to belong among those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at large.Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here, involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own.I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them.I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary.[Part 2]I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of mere patriotism.Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state.Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps me from feeling isolated.The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is.
A newly formed planet appeared on the large screen. its surface was till red-hot, like a piece of charcoal fresh out of the furnace. Time passed at the rate of geological eras, and the planet gradually cooled. The color and patterns on the surface slowly shifted in a hypnotic manner. A few minutes later, an orange planet appeared on the screen, indicating the end of the simulation run."The computations were done at the coarsest level; to do it with more precision would require over a month." Green Glasses moved the mouse and zoomed in on the surface of the planet. The view swept over a broad desert, over a cluster of strangely shaped, towering mountain peaks, over a circular depression like an impact crater."What are we looking at?" Yang Dong asked."Earth. Without life, this is what the surface of the planet would look like now.""But . . . where are the oceans?""There are no oceans. No rivers either. The entire surface is dry.""Your'e saying that without life, liquid water would not exist on Earth?""The reality would probably be even more shocking. Remember, this is only a coarse simulation, but at least you can see how much of an impact life had in the present state of the Earth.""But--""Do you think life is nothing but a fragile, thin, soft shell clinging to the surface of this planet?""Isn't it?""Only if you neglect the power of time. If a colony of ants continue to move clods the size of grains of rice, they could remove all of Mount Tai in a billion years. As long as you give it enough time, life is stronger than metal and stone, more powerful than typhoons and volcanoes.