Clarity means peaceful spiritual possession, sufficient domination of our minds over images, not to suffer anxiety about the threat that the object grasped will flee from us. All cultural endeavor is an interpretation—elucidation, explanation, exegesis—of life. Life is the eternal text, the burning bush by the edge of the path from which God speaks. Culture—art or science or politics—is the commentary, it is the aspect of life in which, by an act of self-reflection, life acquires polish and order. In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will. It would be odd indeed if the result of ll these efforts led only to duplicating the problem of the universe. No, man has a mission of clarity upon earth.
— Meditations on Quixote