文档介绍：: .
enterprise, in choosingthis moment and no other when the south wind
will carry me exactly northward at a velocity of
eight knots, I have converted the machinery of my
25 fate into the servant of my will. All this I understand,
as I understand each detail of the technique by which
this is carried out. What I don't understand is why I
am so intent on going to this particular place. Who
wants the North Pole! What good is it! Can you eat
30 it? Will it carry you from Gothenburg to Malmö like
a railway? The Danish ministers have declared from
their pulpits that participation in polar expeditions is
beneficial to the soul's eternal well-being, or so I read
in a newspaper. It isn't clear how this doctrine is to
35 be interpreted, except that the Pole is something
difficult or impossible to attain which must
nevertheless be sought for, because man is
condemned to seek out and know everything
whether or not the knowledge gives him pleasure. In
40 short, it is the same unthinking lust for knowledge
that drove our First Parents out of the garden.
And suppose you were to find it in spite of all, this
wonderful place that everybody is so anxious to stand
on! What would you find? Exactly nothing.
45 A point precisely identical to all the others in a
completely featureless wasteland stretching around it
for hundreds of miles. It is an abstraction, a
mathematical fiction. No one but a Swedish madman
could take the slightest interest in it. Here I am. The
50 wind is still from the south, bearing us steadily
northward at the speed of a trotting dog. Behind us,
perhaps forever, lie the Cities of Men with their
teacups and their brass bedsteads. I am going forth of
my own volition to join the gh