19

BETWEEN DAY AND NIGHT: Let us not delude ourselves into imagining, as too many philosophers have done, that life is either difficult or easy when, in reality, it is both difficult and easy, though, admittedly, not usually at the same time. Let us not delude ourselves either, in the manner of the most pessimistic stoics, that life is both war and suffering when, in reality, it is both war and peace and pleasure and pain. Still less do we wish to consider life an absurdity when we cannot help noticing its reasonableness too, and can only conclude those who can't to be either poor-sighted or the victims of rather serious mental aberrations.

No, we are not worshippers of the moon, we dualists, and neither are we worshippers of the sun! It doesn't become us to serve the one at the expense of the other but, rather, to serve or, at any rate, acknowledge them both. If we give a little more attention, as men, to the sun than to the moon, is it not because we are basically unable to do anything else, since something buried deep inside our dual natures responds to the ultimate sovereignty of the active over the passive, and thereby sets our bias in that direction?

Ah, but we do not pretend, for all our natural inclinations, that the moon is unworthy of our attention. We aren't sufficiently extreme, perverse, or deluded, in such matters, to suppose ourselves capable of thriving without them both, and, to be sure, we have never heard anything from either of them to the effect that we should. But when we temporarily turn our faces away from the light of the one, is it not in order that we may better learn to appreciate the light of the other, that we may so shine ourselves, and in such a way as to do absolute justice to each? Truly, it is not for us to detract from the positivity of the one by foolishly belittling the negativity of the other! There are quite enough misunderstandings in the world already.