When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
Just as rust, which arose from the iron itself, wears out the iron, likewise, performing an action without examination would destroy us by projecting us into a negative state of existence.
I will perform the function of a whetstone, which is about to restore sharpness to iron, though itself unable to cut.
[Lat., Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsi secandi.]
But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury added.
Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you tonight in my … chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved, the Iron Lady of the Western world. Me? A Cold War warrior? … Well, yes — if that is how they wish to interpret my defense of values of freedoms fundamental to our way of life.