Tags:
Audiobook
Memoir
Wistful
Thoughtful
Father
Son
Reflective
Adult
40s
Family
Nature
Fishing
Childhood Memories
Nostalgia
50s
60s
Script:
One summer, when I was five or six, my father rented a camp on a lake in Maine and took us all there for the month of August. We all got ringworm from some kittens and had to rub ponds extract on our arms and legs night and morning, and my father rolled over in a canoe with all his clothes on, but outside of that the vacation was a success, and from then on none of us ever thought there was any place in the world like that lake in Maine. We returned summer after summer, always on August 1st for one month. I have since become a saltwater man, but sometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the seawater and the incessant wind that blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods. A few weeks ago this feeling got so strong I bought myself a couple of bass hooks and a spinner and returned to the lake where we used to go for a week's fishing and to revisit old haunts. I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose and who had seen lily pads only from train windows. On the journey over to the lake I began to wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this holy spot, the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and the paths behind the camps. It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. You remember one thing and that suddenly reminds you of another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. I was always the first up, and I would dress softly so as not to wake the others and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral. My boy and I went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in the bait can and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water. It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years.
Tags:
Audiobook
Dramatic
Suspenseful
Emotional
Adult
30s
40s
Relationships
Love
Marriage
Betrayal
M/F Dialogue
Male/Female Dialogue
Missed Romantic Opportunity
Lost Love
Rejection
Script:
Then, late one night in October, his doorbell rang. Who is it? Arthur said. It's me. He opened the door. She stood in the doorway with a smile that he saw head hesitation in it. Can I come in? Sure, Tutsila. Of course. Come in. What's happened? Is something wrong? There's nothing wrong, really. I just thought I would come by. She was walking a bit carefully. She had been drinking, he could see. She felt her way around a chair and sat. You want something? Coffee? I'll make some coffee. She was looking around her. You know, I've never been here. This is the first time. It's not much of a place. I guess I could find something better. Is that the bedroom? Yes, he said, but her gaze had drifted from it. I just wanted to talk. Sure, about what? He knew, or was afraid he did. We've known each other a long time. What has it been, three years? He felt nervous, the aimless way it was going. He didn't want to disappoint her. On the other hand, he was not sure what it was she wanted. Him? Now? You're pretty smart. Me? Oh, God, no. You understand people. Can you really make some coffee? I think I'd like a cup. While he busied himself, she sat quietly. He saw her staring toward the window, beyond which were the lights of apartments and other buildings in the black, starless sky. So, she said, holding the coffee, give me some advice. Bobby wants to get married. Arthur was silent. He wants to marry me. The reason I was never serious about him was that he was involved all that time with some Danish girl. I figured something like that. What did you figure? I could see something wasn't right. I never met her. I imagined her as being pretty and having this great accent. You know how you torture yourself. Ah, Doreen, he said. There's nobody nicer than you. Anyway, yesterday he told me he'd broken up with her. He did it because of me. He realized it was me he loved and he wanted to marry me. Well, that's… Arthur didn't know what to say. His thoughts were skipping wildly. There is that fearful moment in the ceremony when it is asked if there is anyone who knows why these two should not be wed. This was that moment.
Tags:
Audiobook
3rd person narration
Fiction
Scene description
Resonant
Authoritative
Serious
Adult
30s
40s
Crime
Trial
Courtroom Drama
Murder Mystery
Script:
The accused man, Kabuo Miyamoto, sat proudly upright with a rigid grace, his palms placed softly on the defendant's table. The posture of a man who has detached himself insofar as this is possible at his own trial. Some in the gallery would later say that his stillness suggested a disdain for the proceedings. Others felt certain it veiled a fear of the verdict that was to come. Whichever it was, Kabuo showed nothing, not even a flicker of the eyes. He was dressed in a white shirt, worn buttoned to the throat in gray, neatly pressed trousers. His figure, especially the neck and shoulders, communicated the impression of irrefutable physical strength and of precise, even imperial bearing. Kabuo's features were smooth and angular. His hair had been cropped close to his skull in a manner that made its musculature prominent. In the face of the charge that had been leveled against him, he sat with his dark eyes trained straight ahead and did not appear moved at all. In the public gallery every seat had been taken, yet the courtroom suggested nothing of the carnival atmosphere sometimes found at country murder trials. In fact, the eighty-five citizens gathered there seemed strangely subdued and contemplative. Most of them had known Carl Heine, a salmon fisherman with a wife and three children, who was buried now in the Lutheran cemetery up on Indianob Hill. Most had dressed with the same communal propriety they felt on Sundays before attending church services, and since the courtroom, however stark, mirrored in their hearts the dignity of their prayer-houses, they conducted themselves with church-going solemnity. This courtroom, Judge Llewellyn Fielding's, down at the end of a damp, drafty hallway on the third floor of Island County Courthouse, was run down and small as courtrooms go. It was a place of grey-hued and bleak simplicity, a cramped gallery, a bench for the judge, a witness stand, a plywood platform for the jurors, and scuffed tables for the defendant and his prosecutor. The jurors sat with studiously impassive faces as they strained to make sense of matters. The men—two truck farmers, a retired crabber, a bookkeeper, a carpenter, a boatbuilder, a grocer, and a halibut schooner deckhand—were all dressed in coats and neckties. The women all wore Sunday dresses—a retired waitress, a sawmill secretary, two nervous fisherwives. A hairdresser accompanied them as alternate. The bailiff, Ed Soames, at the request of Judge Fielding, had given a good head of steam to the sluggish radiators, which now and again sighed in the four corners of the room. In the heat they produced—a humid, overbearing swelter—the smell of sour mildew seemed to rise from everything.
Tags:
audiobook
science
physics
heat
discoveries
nature of time
understanding the universe
Script:
Along with the major theories that I've already discussed and that describe the elementary constituents of the world, there is another great bastion of physics which is somewhat different from the others. A single question unexpectedly gave rise to it. What is heat? Until the mid-nineteenth century, physicists attempted to understand heat by thinking of it as a kind of fluid called caloric, or two fluids, one hot and one cold. The idea turned out to be wrong. Eventually, the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann understood, and what he understood is very beautiful, strange, and profound, and takes us into regions which are still largely unexplored. What he came to understand is that a hot substance is not one which contains caloric fluid. A hot substance is a substance in which atoms move more quickly. Cold air is air in which atoms, or rather molecules, move more slowly. Hot air is air in which molecules move more rapidly. Beautifully simple, but it doesn't end there. Heat, as we know, always moves from hot things to cold. A cold teaspoon placed in a cup of hot tea also becomes hot. If we don't dress appropriately on a freezing cold day, we quickly lose body heat and become cold. Why does heat go from hot things to cold things and not vice versa? It is a crucial question because it relates to the nature of time. In every case in which heat exchange does not occur, or when the heat exchange is negligible, we see that the future behaves exactly like the past. For example, for the motions of the planets of the solar system, heat is almost irrelevant, and in fact this same motion could equally take place in reverse without any law of physics being infringed. As soon as there is heat, however, the future is different from the past. While there is no friction, for instance, a pendulum can swing forever. If we filmed it and ran the film in reverse, we would see movement that is completely possible. But if there is friction, then the pendulum heats its supports slightly, loses energy, and slows down. Friction produces heat, and immediately we are able to distinguish the future, towards which the pendulum slows, from the past. We have never seen a pendulum start swinging from a stationary position, with its movement initiated by the energy obtained by absorbing heat from its supports. The difference between past and future only exists when there is heat. The fundamental phenomenon that distinguishes the future from the past is the fact that heat passes from things that are hotter to things that are colder. So again, why, as time goes by, does heat pass from hot things to cold and not the other way around? The reason was discovered by Boltzmann, and is surprisingly simple. It is sheer chance.
Tags:
Audiobook
1st person narration
Wry
Humorous
Self-deprecating
Engaging
Adult
40s
fifties
Aging
Happiness
Health
Mobility
Friendship
Humor
Senior citizens
Nursing home
Care home
Script:
I recently heard about a research study that shows that 80-year-olds are happier than they were aged 40. 40 is the low point on the happiness scale. At that age, you have to worry about both your parents and your kids, and then there's the stress of your job as well. These are the findings of a professor who is 80 years old himself. He knows of what he speaks, but has this professor ever visited a nursing home like ours? If he had, he would know that the faces in here don't exactly radiate joy, that old people are very good at concealing any happiness they feel. Perhaps he should come and give a few lectures here to explain a thing or two. After all, it's now or never as far as happiness is concerned. Let me give the weather as an example. It has been stormy for nearly a week, and after just a dip down to moderate gale force, the wind is back up to hurricane strength. If you were even just half as happy as the professor maintains, it stands to reason that he wouldn't let a stiff little breeze get you down. On the contrary, you'd go outside and let the wind whip through your hair. But that doesn't really happen here. One mostly hears whining about ruined hairdos, as if it's so important for those last remaining hairs to be perfectly quaffed. For myself, I have discovered that my mobility scooter is rather sensitive to crosswinds. I nearly capsized this morning when a wind gust sideswiped me, pushing me up against the curb between two tall buildings. I heard William shout with laughter behind me on his scooter. A few hundred yards further on, it was my turn to laugh. William got drenched by a car tearing through a puddle alongside him. Two old rascals on a quiet, stormy Sunday morning who were simply elated to be out in the wind and weather. William and I, and the other members of the Old But Not Dead Club, are no strangers to the travails of the flesh. Not to complain, but just to take into account. Everett is in a wheelchair with diabetes. Antoine and Marie are a classic example of the lame and the blind. He has rheumatism. Her eyesight is failing. Edward has had a stroke and his speech is practically unintelligible. William has a colostomy and a sleep disorder. Leigh and he is afflicted with a serious tremor and is incontinent. I am short of breath and have trouble walking, an embarrassing dribble, and the occasional bout of gout. Graeme is the only one who is still in reasonably fine fettle. Impressive list of ailments, isn't it? Our club has clear guidelines about this. There is to be no whining, but making fun of one's aches and pains is allowed. That helps tremendously. We laugh a lot about our various miseries. It makes living with the restrictions brought on by the body's decrepitude a great deal easier.
Tags:
Audiobook
Historical nonfiction
American history
Professorial
Serious
Authoritative
Adult
Mature
Travel
George Washington
American Revolution
Presidency
Politics
Electoral College
Federalists
Anti-Federalists
First US Presidency
Early American Republic
History
Script:
Travel was essential to George Washington. As a surveyor in his teens and as a British provincial officer in his twenties, he had ventured all over the American colonies, traveling as far west as the Ohio River and as far north as the Great Lakes. During his eight years as commander of the Continental Army, he had crisscrossed the country countless times, ultimately claiming victory with a 500-mile march from New York to Yorktown. Even during Washington's supposed retirement to Mount Vernon after the war, he remained on the move, spending as many as six hours a day on horseback inspecting his sprawling plantation. Washington liked nothing more than to be out there and seeing the world. There was one journey, however, he did not want to make. At about 10 a.m. on April 16, 1789, he walked out of the house he loved more than any place in the world and stepped into a carriage bound for New York City and the presidency of the United States. I bid adieu, he wrote in his diary, to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity. And with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express. Instead of the culmination of a life in public service, the presidency seemed to Washington a kind of death sentence. He confessed to Henry Knox, his future secretary of war, that he felt like a culprit who was going to the place of his execution. He had given up, he told Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, all expectations of private happiness in this world. He didn't have, he insisted, that competency of political skill the job required. Yes, he had worked miracles during the Revolution, but those achievements only created expectations that no man could live up to. My countrymen will expect too much from me, he wrote to Rutledge. I fear if the issue of public measures should not correspond with their sanguine expectations, they will turn the extravagant, and I may say undue, praises, into equally extravagant censures. So much is expected. So many untoward circumstances may intervene in such a new and critical situation that I feel an insuperable diffidence in my own abilities. The Constitution had established an electoral college of 69 electors, the number based on the state's representation in Congress, with each elector given two votes. Instead of a single day, the election was conducted over the course of several weeks, with each state's electors meeting at that state's capital. It then took another two months to count the votes in what was the first such popular election of a national leader in the world. For now, Washington just wanted to get the 250-mile journey to New York over with as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the American people, who had already begun to make plans for his reception along the way, had other ideas.
Tags:
Audiobook
Thriller
German accent
Skoda
Colt
Luger
Male
Werner Volkmann
Deuce Thurkettl
Suspenseful
Intense
Dramatic
Adult
30s
40s
Espionage
Murder
East Germany
Pistol
Double cross
Script:
Werner lowered the car window. Was there any difficulty? he asked. Nothing I couldn't handle, but Fiona Sampson is dead, said Thurgoodle. One of the Ruski goons wasted her. Fiona Sampson is dead? Are you sure? It's not something I'd make a mistake about. My God! Poor Fiona! said Werner. After a moment he got out of the car and went back to the trunk. He looked around him in the brightening dawn. There wasn't much time. Yeah, well, that's the way it goes, said Thurgoodle philosophically. Werner reached into the Skoda's trunk to get a leather briefcase. Carefully he put the case into Thurgoodle's hands, saying, Don't rest it on the car. The paintwork is brand new. Thurgoodle smiled pitifully. He was used to this. Clients were always timorous when dealing with a hitman. Thurgoodle held the case with both hands while Werner bent forward to the lock. He could smell the blood and filth on Thurgoodle's clothes, the stink of the slaughterhouse. You can make the combination anything you choose. I made it one, two, three. You can't forget one, two, three, can you? No, said Thurgoodle. Werner snapped the lock open and pulled up the lid. There it was, used fifty-dollar bills, line upon line of them. You can't forget one, two, three. It was while Thurgoodle was standing there, holding the case with both hands, that Werner, gripping the curious-looking gun that he was hiding under the case, pulled the trigger. The rounds fired as fast as a machine gun. They all went into Thurgoodle's belly. The impact of these small, medium-velocity rounds did not knock Thurgoodle down. He just staggered backward a couple of paces, staring at Werner in uncomprehending disbelief. This couldn't be happening to him. He was shot. Thurgoodle was a professional killer, and this jerk was a nothing. He tasted the blood gushing up into his mouth and knew he was done for. It was then that Thurgoodle understood exactly how he'd been tricked. His eyes opened wide in fury. Deuce Thurgoodle was the only one who knew for certain that Fiona Sampson was still alive. Well, he'd tell the world. He opened his mouth to tell the truth, but only blood came out. Lots of it. Then he toppled to the ground.
Tags:
Audiobook
Nonfiction
Business
Investing
Money & Finance
Retirement
Professional
Authoritative
Informative
Adult
40s
forties
50s
fifties
mature
Retirement planning
Financial planning
Investment
Financial market valuations
Script:
Traditional retirement financial planning has failed. The system is not realistic because the average individual doesn't have the skills and knowledge required to successfully execute a traditional retirement plan. Under today's broken model, you need to voluntarily save a significant portion of your income with discipline throughout your career, eight to 30%, depending on the age you begin saving. You must develop investment expertise to implement smart asset allocation and investment decisions. You need to predict the future by knowing in advance when you and your spouse will die so that you also know how long your savings must last. You should accurately plan when you will end work, either voluntarily or due to sickness or possibly because of layoffs that are obviously out of your control. Precisely calculate the inflation rate for your remaining lifetime, even though trained economists can't accurately predict this number even one year into the future. Correctly estimate what your investment portfolio will return in the 10 years before you retire, the 10 years after you retire, and each subsequent decade. You must never raid your retirement nest egg, even when adversity strikes, you get laid off, run into health problems, fund college, or get divorced. And then to top it all off, you're supposed to manage your retirement savings so that you spend your last dollar as you exhale your last breath. Do you know anyone who can do all those things? Of course you don't. Nobody does. Too many factors are completely out of your control, even if you did have the skills and expertise. No wonder most workers are failing to secure their retirement. To execute a perfect retirement plan using the traditional approach, you would need the savings discipline of a celibate monk living in a brothel, investment skills that exceed those of most pension and mutual fund professionals, a perfectly calibrated and cloud-free crystal ball, and the actuarial skills of an insurance expert. Those sound like pretty demanding standards for someone who only wants to quit work. And yet, every day in financial planning offices, people are following this well-trodden path by paying a professional to get a precise calculation of the savings required to secure their financial future, their retirement number, and then heading out the door to try and save their way to that mythical goal.
Tags:
Audiobook
Mystery
Russian accent
Mysterious
Suspenseful
Intense
Adult
40s
50s
Russian culture
homicide investigation
Detective
Israeli intelligence
Retired detective
Script:
Mr. Bookshot, he said when I opened the door, my name is Yitzhak Steinblatt. I am from Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs. I work to maintain special bonds between Jews of America and State of Israel. I have come to spend time with Jews of American Midwest, and I am told in Cleveland I must speak to Mr. Bookshot to say you know everyone. He enveloped my hand with a monstrous paw and shook it with Ursine enthusiasm. Careful there, big guy, I said. I am a geezer on blood thinners, you know. I bruise pretty easily. I am very sorry. Why don't you come on in and have a cup of coffee? So when did he move to Israel, I asked. Right after Soviet Union collapsed. He had to be ex-Russian military or former KGB. An undercover Mossad assassin right there at my damn kitchen table. I cleared my throat. And who was it again who told you to come by and talk to me? I spoke to someone with Cleveland Jewish Federation, he said. You didn't talk to Avram Silver? I don't know who that is. I took a long sip from my coffee. Let me tell you a story, I said. I used to be a homicide detective back in the prehistoric days before I got old. A rookie cop once asked me how I could tell when an investigation was heading in the right direction. It's part intuition, part instinct, and part putting the facts together. But mostly I know I am on the right track when some kind of heavy shows up to try to intimidate me. Heavy? Yeah, an enforcer, a goon, muscle, meat on the hooves. You follow? I think I understand, he said. Sometimes they make overt threats, I continued, keeping an even conversational tone. Sometimes they are polite or even friendly while still managing to convey that unmistakable menacing subtext. The Russian set his coffee cup carefully on the saucer. I remember this one case. Heavy had strangled a girl in a cheap apartment in a bad part of town, and I thought a senior aide to the mayor was the killer, so I arrested him. But since I didn't have any evidence, I had to cut him loose after 24 hours, and the same afternoon a heavy showed up outside the police station, a guy about your size, actually. He didn't say anything to me, but when he saw me notice him, he just nodded and cracked his knuckles. I glanced at the Russian's big hands resting on my kitchen table. The next morning I stopped at a coffee shop, and there was the same guy standing across the street, and he nodded and cracked his knuckles. And when I left work, there he was again, with his goddamn knuckles. Did that frighten you? It was a little disconcerting. This guy kept showing up everywhere I went for a couple of days, but when I tried to take my family out to dinner and he was waiting for me at the restaurant, I decided I'd had enough. What did you do? I shot him.
Tags:
Audiobook
Religion & Spirituality
Articulate
informative
authoritative
Adult
30s
thirties
40s
forties
mature
Religion
spirituality
humanization of God
history of religions
faith
belief
language of religion
God
Script:
The compulsion to humanize the divine is hardwired in our brains, which is why it has become a central feature in almost every religious tradition the world has known. The very process through which the concept of God arose in human evolution compels us, consciously or not, to fashion God in our own image. In fact, the entire history of human spirituality can be viewed as one long, interconnected, ever-evolving and remarkably cohesive effort to make sense of the divine by giving it our emotions and our personalities, by ascribing to it our traits and our desires, by providing it with our strengths and our weaknesses, even our own bodies. In short, by making God us. What I mean to say is that more often than not, whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we're believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves, a human being but with superhuman powers. This is not to claim that there is no such thing as God or that what we call God is wholly a human invention. Both of these statements may very well be true, but that is not the concern of this book. I have no interest in trying to prove the existence or non-existence of God for the simple reason that no proof exists either way. Faith is a choice. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to convert you. You either choose to believe that there is something beyond the material realm, something real, something knowable, or you don't. If like me you do, then you must ask yourself another question. Do you wish to experience this thing? Do you wish to commune with it, to know it? If so, then it may help to have a language with which to express what is fundamentally an inexpressible experience. That is where religion comes in. Beyond the myths and rituals, the temples and cathedrals, the do's and don'ts that have for millennia separated humanity into different and often competing camps of belief. Religion is little more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors that allows believers to communicate to one another and to themselves the ineffable experience of faith. It's just that throughout the history of religions, there has been one symbol that has stood out as universal and supreme. One grand metaphor for God from which practically every other symbol and metaphor in nearly all the world's religions has been derived. Thus, the human being.
Tags:
Audiobook
Self-help
Health & Wellness
Soothing
Inspirational
Motivational
Adult
30s
thirties
40s
forties
50s
fifties
mature
Personal Growth
Overcoming Depression
Finding Purpose in Life
Living a meaningful life
Confounding of consciousness
Script:
Sometimes, to our dismay, we find that we have been living someone else's life, that their values have and are directing our choices. While this life we are leading never quite feels right, it seems to be the only alternative. Even when we win the applause of others, we secretly feel fraudulent. Consider this true story. A 38-year-old woman who had risen to be a vice president of sales in her medical instruments company was flying from New York to Denver. Somewhere over Nebraska, while reading a book, a startling thought intruded on her consciousness. I hate my life. She had identified her life with the achievement of her professional goals, but from that moment on, she knew that she had been walking on the uncertain crust of the depression all the while. Or consider the man who had spent his life in academia and brilliantly served the life of the mind. Now retired, he fell into depression, for he had no structure to carry his psychological energies for him, no insistent agenda of values to serve, no sense of who he was apart from his role, his committees, and his teaching task. One day while driving home, he began to unaccountably weep, and no image or reason presented itself to his shaken consciousness. This man, who had lived quite successfully out of his head, confessed how humbling it was to be pulled so helplessly down into the body. That evening, he dreamed that he was back in the university setting, that he was taking an exam for which he was unprepared, and that everyone else was far ahead of him on the test. The female instructor walked over to him and said, I am not going to let you fail this course. He recalled that as a child, his mother was forever directing his energies, setting her goals as his goals, and frequently intervening for him with the same tone this instructor had used in the dream. When he was a powerless child, he knew his mother's will had to be his, and so he lived out her ambitions for him. But in this dream, all of a sudden it came to me that I didn't have to take this course. I thought, this test means nothing to me, I am beyond being tested in this way. Relief overwhelmed me, I tore up the blue book and walked out of the room, and into the beginning of a different life, his life. What do these quite different people have in common? Each of them experienced an insurgency of the soul, an overthrow of the ego's understanding of self and world, and a rather demanding invitation to live more consciously in this second half of life. But first came the confounding of consciousness and the sense that each of them had moved, or better been pulled, from a familiar environment into some darker wood. Who does not resonate to this familiar image of voyaging through a dark wood? At one time or another, each of us has been there.
Tags:
Audiobook
Folk Tale
Narration in German
Entertainment
Male
Female
Dramatic
Storytelling
Engaging
Adult
30s
40s
Folk Tales
Natural Disasters
Survival
German culture
children
Script:
Eines Tages verdunkelte sich der Himmel, und es gab einen schweren Sturm. Mit lautem Tosen fegte er durch den Wald, entwurzelte Sträucher und Bäume. Und erst nach tagelangem Wüten verschwand er so plötzlich, wie er gekommen war. Völlig zerzaust ließ er den Wald zurück. Kaum ein Baum, der nicht in Mitleidenschaft gezogen wurde.
Tags:
Audiobook
Philosophy
Narration in French
Male
Intellectual
Thoughtful
Serious
Adult
30s
thirties
Suicide
Life
Nietzsche
Script:
Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux. C'est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d'être vécue, c'est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie. Le reste, si le monde a trois dimensions, si l'esprit a neuf ou douze catégories, vient ensuite. Ce sont des jeux. Il faut d'abord répondre. Et s'il est vrai, comme le veut Nietzsche, qu'un philosophe, pour être estimable, doit prêcher d'exemples, on saisit l'importance de cette réponse puisqu'elle va précéder le geste définitif. Ce sont là des évidences sensibles au cœur, mais qu'il faut approfondir pour les rendre claires à l'esprit.