 Negatively considered, moral consciousness delivers us from the unquenchable thirst that is individuated human life, along with the unremitting oscillation between pain and boredom. Positively considered, moral consciousness generates a measure of wisdom, as one’s outlook becomes akin to a universal novel that contains the templates for all of the human stories that have been repeating themselves generation after generation – stories comic and tragic, pathetic and triumphant, and trivial and monumental. One becomes like the steadfast tree, whose generations of leaves fall away with each passing season, as does generation after generation of people (Homer, Iliad, Book VI).