Humankind will proceed toward perfection when it feels that humanity
is: A limitless sky and a shoreless ocean, an ever-blazing flame, an
eternally gleaming light, a wind when it gusts and when it is calm, a
cloud when it thunders and lightnings and rains, a stream when it sings or roars, a tree
when it blossoms in the spring and disrobes in the autumn, a mountain when
it towers, a valley when it descends, and a field when it is fertile or barren.

When humankind has felt all these things, it will have reached the midpoint in its
path toward perfection. If it wishes to arrive at the road to perfection, it must, if it
perceives its own essence, feel that humanity is: An infant relying on its mother, a
mature man responsible for his dependents, a youth lost among his desires and
passions, an elderly man whose past and future wrestle with one another, a
worshipper in his hermitage, a criminal in his cell, a scholar amidst his books and
papers, a fool between the black of night and the dark of his day, a nun among
the flowers of her faith and the thorns of her loneliness, a prostitute between the
talons of her weakness and the claws of her neediness, the indigent between his
bitterness and complaisance, the rich man between his ambitions and his
submission, the poet between the fog of his evenings and the rays of his dawns.
Should humankind prove able to experience and know all these things, it will
arrive at perfection and become one shadow among the shadows of Gods.