The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: a blow from the web of pains and pleasures.
It follows that man is twofold at least; that he is not a
rounded and autonomous empire; but that in the same body with
him there dwell other powers tributary but independent. If I
now behold one walking in a garden, curiously coloured and
illuminated by the sun, digesting his food with elaborate
chemistry, breathing, circulating blood, directing himself by
the sight of his eyes, accommodating his body by a thousand
delicate balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the
path, and all the time, perhaps, with his mind engaged about
America, or the dog-star, or the attributes of God - what am
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