Life There is a tower that all must climb. At most, a hundred stairs lead up to it. The tower is hollow, and once a man reached the top, he falls down through it and is crushed. But hardly anybody falls down from so high up. It is the fate of each individual that if he reaches a certain appointed stair whose number he does not know beforehand, the stair gives way under his feet, reveals itself as a covering to a pitfall, and he disappears. Only he does not know whether the stair is twentieth or the sixty-third, or what its number is; but that one of these stairs will give way under him, this he surely knows. At first to ascend is easy, but slow. The ascent itself causes not the slightest difficulty, and at each stair the view through the peep-holes in the tower gives pleasure enough. Everything is so new. The eyes dwell with a lingering interest on what is near as well as what is far away. And there is so much still in prospect. By degrees, the ascent causes more difficulty; the eyes grow more in different to the view, which always looks the same; and at the same time it seems as if there is hardly any lingering on each single stair, but as though one mounted more swiftly than before and took several stairs at a time; which, however, cannot be. As often as, once a year, a man mounts a stair, his fellow travelers wish him joy of not yet having disappeared. Each time that he has ten stairs behind him and begins on a new landing, the congratulations are warmer; and each time the ever more paradoxical hope that his journey may long continue is more cordially expressed. The man concerned is generally deeply moved, and forgets both how little satisfaction he has behind him and what adversity is still in store. So life passes for the majority of so-called normal people who remain spiritually in the same place. But there is also a pit shaft (竖井) into which those who desire to dig themselves galleries (矿井坑道) under the earth may descend, and likewise those whose desire is set on exploring the galleries others in the course of the centuries have dug. From year to year these continually go deeper down, to where metals and minerals lie hid. They make themselves familiar with the subterranean world, find their way among the labyrinthine galleries, direct or understand or take part in the work down there, and in this forget how the years are passing.