think it an act of devotion to consume their lives in the lives of others who are their equals in maturity and full adulthood, forget-ting that their failure to turn their latent talents to the best account has made what they offer of no benefit to those for whose sake they sacrificed life.

There are, then, all these paths, and many others besides, subject to the will to fail. But do not let it escape you that the efforts expended only appear on the surface to be vain and aimless; the truth is that each of them has a hidden purpose. For all those who perform their work with scattered effort, and the resentful and

discontented, and the triflers, aim by this conduct of theirs to deceive themselves: they mean to fill the emptiness of every moment and minute of their waking hours com-pletely, so that not the smallest gap remains through which the feeling might steal in upon them that their effort is dust without fruit — so that when night overtakes them they are still absorbed in amuse-ment, or the burdens have reached such a pitch that they can no longer see matters as they really are.

And how hideous is the sight of them when their truth stands naked before our eyes! You see them like madmen whose wits avarice has carried off; for their life is in their

hands like a treasury beyond all price, and never, so long as they live, will they win another — yet in their folly they stuff it with malig-nant trifles of paltry worth, and unripe experiments, and misleading passions, and vain infatuation, and counterfeit sentiments.

It is plain that all these conditions conceal one purpose, which often settles in the soul without its owner being aware: to fill life completely with paltry efforts, or with efforts spent on what is not fitting, so that no time remains to us in which to do the best work of which we are capable.

The sum of it is that the purpose is the pursuit of failure.