Which isn’t to say that such a person becomes unfeeling as a rock must be unfeeling, but that, by an effort of will, and by dint of an imagination that has been exercised in the broadest disciplines of knowledge, and brought under the jurisdiction of the conscience (which is independent of one’s interests, at least as that concept is popularly defined), they arrive at a perspective that regards human pursuits, when not ennobled by some transcendent purpose, as futile, meaningless, and vain.