I am chasing after the great book. I wonder about what the world would be if Homer or Aquinas or Voltaire or Hemingway had not written. And I am arrogant enough to wonder to myself, what if the great book is within me? And who am I to thieve the world of it and not pull it out of myself. Miles I have to go, indeed!

I am still catching up to the greats. I can feel myself understanding more of Nietzsche. Even writing some of his ideas, only to discover that he had already written them before. I read Nietzsche and discover what I have only fumbled with in my own mind, articulated so clearly!

Yet I have one advantage: I have come after these great minds. I have the distinct advantage of being born at such a time that it is possible for me to read them, as well as the greats before them. Whereas they only had the advantage of reading their own predecessors. So if we assume that at least some knowledge is passed along and built upon in human history, then I have just slightly more intellectual wealth to draw from. Thank god it has been recorded! And woe for what has not.

And I cannot skip ahead. There are still things that can only be understood in the present lifetime, things that must be felt and seen and experienced in the real present. So that it is not possible just to read the last great and understand everything. Still I must read everything. So in this way I have a disadvantage, or, a greater challenge rather! In that I have more to read, more greats before me than had Nietzsche, owing to the addition of the few greats after his lifetime and before mine.

Tragic, that it is necessarily an individual endeavor. For even if I do write the great book that I am chasing after. It will only contain a fraction of the truths. The other truths must already be present in the heart of the reader. So that the great book that I hope to write is really only the key to a larger enigma. The key alone is a beautiful work of art. Like looking upon the peak of a tall mountain. But only the actual climb partaken in, only therein does the whole truth reveal itself.