All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups - (a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.
There are three kinds of brains. The one understands things unassisted, the other understands things when shown by others, the third understands neither alone nor with the explanations of others.
I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.
The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life... three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
And the reason I am so nervous is that everything I do now is leading me to one of three possible futures... Which one will it be? Time alone will tell. But still I know that writing this diary can perhaps provide the answer; it may even help produce the right future.
So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work... Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement.