Quote of the Day (11/26/09) (Longing Week)

As soon as the primitive's astonished eye perceives the dawning world of ordered extension, and the significant emerges in great outlines from the welter of mere impressions, and the irrevocable parting of outer world from his proper, his inner, world gives form and direction to his waking life, there arises in the soul instantly conscious of its loneliness the root-feeling of longing. . . . It is this that urges "becoming" toward its goal, that motives the fulfillment and actualizing of every upward possibility, that unfolds the idea of individual being. It is the child's longing, which will presently come into the consciousness more and more clearly as a feeling of constant direction and finally stand before the mature spirit as the enigma of Time, queer, tempting, insoluble. Suddenly, the words "past" and "future" have acquired a fateful meaning.
--Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West