Some among the many latent connections of ideas would flare up at times and yield a specious certainty. It would seem to him as if a conclusion could be drawn, a foundation established. These would stay fresh for a few days before revealing themselves as hollow shells.  But then the very process of failing again seemed worthwhile, at least proving that one was alive, and safely far from any conclusion, far from the estuary. The sense of failure, the bitterness that can be savoured in it is a potent reminder of the incompleteness of life, it differs in quality from happiness, but not in kind. It goes down to a certain depth, has the authentic salty taste of the alien thing one has been enlisted in. What he dreamed of was a critique of life itself. To him this was undoubtedly the basis of most religions, no matter which side they came down upon in the end, no matter how loudly the priests would insist that it was what came next that was important. Perhaps in this over-stuffed epoch everyone must come up with a critique of their own, proceeding from their own private and particular premises, from their own pre-dawn vigils.