Read it through once

And now he comes to the important questions in the King’s letter-- whether he, the poet, his soul thus in men’s hearts, has not attained the very crown and proper end of life--whether, now life closeth up, he faces death with success in his right hand,--whether he fears death less than he, the King, does himself, the fortunate of men, who assigns the reason for thinking that he does, that he, the poet, leaves much behind, his life stays in the poems men shall sing, the pictures men shall study; while the King’s life, complete and whole now in its power and joy, dies altogether with his brain and arm, as HE leaves not behind, as the poet does, works of art embodying the essence of his life which, through those works, will pass into the lives of men of all succeeding times. Cleon replies that if in the morning of philosophy, the King, with the light now in him, could have looked on all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird, ere man appeared, and if Zeus had questioned him whether he would improve on it, do more for visible creatures than was done, he would have answered, “Ay, by making each grow conscious in himself: all’s perfect else, life’s mechanics can no further go, and all this joy in natural life is put, like fire from off thy fingers into each, so exquisitely perfect is the same. But ‘tis pure fire--and they mere matter are; it has THEM, not they IT: and so I choose, for man, that a third thing shall stand apart from both, a quality arise within the soul, which, intro-active, made to supervise and feel the force it has, may view itself and so be happy.” But it is this quality, Cleon continues, which makes man a failure. This sense of sense, this spirit consciousness, grew the only life worth calling life, the pleasure-house, watch-tower, and treasure-fortress of the soul, which whole surrounding flats of natural life seemed only fit to yield subsistence to; a tower that crowns a country. But alas! the soul now climbs it just to perish there, for thence we have discovered that there’s a world of capability for joy, spread round about us, meant for us, inviting us; and still the soul craves all, and still the flesh replies, “Take no jot more than ere you climbed the tower to look abroad! Nay, so much less, as that fatigue has brought deduction to it.” After expatiating on this sad state of man, he arrives at the same conclusion as the King in his letter: “I agree in sum, O King, with thy profound discouragement, who seest the wider but to sigh the more. Most progress is most failure! thou sayest well.”