Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life—a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them?
The last idea echoes the Book of Job. But in that book, the waters that nourish lands where no man lives are, of course, a good thing. So this introduces the idea that Casaubon's work is not for naught even if nobody sees it?
