The human quality

Title: The human quality
Language: English
Source: Life without principle
Year: 1968
Rights
Fulltext: mi miuFPiM maoazimi o* cooo uammo Entered as second class mail matter at the Manila Poet Office on Dee. 7, 19E5 Vol. XX MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 6 THE HUMAN QUALITY It is not the length of a man’s days that make him immortal, but the intellectual essence of his thoughts. A soul absorbed in transitory things is itself transitory. Nothing is eternal in its duration. Yet all things are eternal in their status, as truth is. When a man’s life is over, it Yemains true that he has lived: that he has been one sort of man, and not another. In the infinite mosaic of history that bit has its unfading colour and its perpetual function and effect. A man who understands himself under the form of eter nity knows the quality that eternally belongs to him, and knows that he cannot wholly die, even if he would; for when the movement of his life is over, the truth of his life remains. — George Santayana