On arriving at the solitary summits of natural elevations, we experience a feeling of privilege; with our own added height, we’re higher than the summits themselves. Nature’s utmost, at least in that place, is beneath our own two feet. Our position makes us kings of the visible world. Everything around us is lower: life is a descending slope or a low-lying plain next to the elevation and pinnacle we’ve become.

Everything we are is due to chance and trickery, and this height we boast isn’t ours; we’re no taller on the summit than our normal height. The hill on which we tread elevates us; it’s the height we’re at that makes us higher.

A rich man breathes easier; a famous man is freer; a title of nobility is itself a small hill. Everything is artifice, but not even the artifice is ours. We climb it, or were brought to it, or we were born in the house on the hill.

Great, however, is the man who realizes that the difference in distance from the valley to the sky and from the hill to the sky makes no difference. Should the flood waters rise, we’re better off in the hills. But when God curses us as Jupiter, with lightning bolts, or as Aeolus, with high winds, then the best cover will be to have remained in the valley, and the best defence to lie low.

Wise is the man who has the potential for height in his muscles but who renounces climbing in his consciousness. By virtue of his gaze, he has all hills, and by virtue of his position, all valleys. The sun that gilds the summits will gild them more for him than for someone at the top who must endure the bright light; and the palace perched high in the woods will be more beautiful for those who see it from the valley than for those who, imprisoned in its rooms, forget it.

I take comfort in these reflections, since I can’t take comfort in life. And the symbol merges with reality when, as a transient body and soul in these low-lying streets that lead to the Tagus, I see the luminous heights of the city glowing, like a glory from beyond, with the various lights of a sun that has already set.