“How many lives would I need to make myself an idea more powerful than anything in the world? ... My ideas went rattling around in my head with lots of space between them. They were like faint, flickering little candles, trembling throughout a lifetime in the middle of a ghostly, abominable universe. Maybe things were a little better than twenty years ago, nobody could say that I hadn’t made a beginning of progress, but there seemed no possibility of my ever managing, like Robinson, to fill my head with one single idea, but that one superb, a thought far stronger than death, and of my succeeding, just with my idea, of exuding joy, carefreeness, and courage wherever I went...”—Ferdinand