It has almost been as if we humans, with our limitations and
in our finitude, not to mention our obvious and tragic defection from right alignment with the
divine intention for the world and for us, were to insist that until and unless we are given what we regard as due recognition and the security of our own survival
in an individualistic sense, we shall refuse to take our
place and play our part
in the creative advance of the
universe.
He thus illustrates how these thinkers influenced Percy's exploration of man's inner confusion about his
place in the
universe: how the Stoic virtue of honorable endurance proper to Percy's Southern upbringing blossomed into the perception of
divine intent revealed through the beauty of created things.