{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_14636/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_14636","id":"gutenberg_14636","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14636","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Faith and reason -- Christianity","Immortality -- Christianity","Tragic, The -- Religious aspects -- Christianity"],"text":"TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE\n\nMIGUEL DE UNAMUNO\n\ntranslator, J.E. CRAWFORD FLITCH\n\n\nDOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC\n\nNew York\n\nThis Dover edition, first published in 1954, is an unabridged and\nunaltered republication of the English translation originally published\nby Macmillan and Company, Ltd., in 1921. This edition is published by\nspecial arrangement with Macmillan and Company, Ltd.\n\nThe publisher is grateful to the Library of the University of\nPennsylvania for supplying a copy of this work for the purpose of\nreproduction.\n\n_Standard Book Number: 486-20257-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card\nNumber: 54-4730_\n\nManufactured in the United States of America\nDover Publications, Inc.\n180 Varick Street\nNew York, N.Y. 10014\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                                                   PAGES\nINTRODUCTORY ESSAY                                              xi-xxxii\n\nAUTHOR'S PREFACE                                             xxxiii-xxxv\n\nI\n\nTHE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE\n\n     Philosophy and the concrete man--The man Kant, the man Butler, and\n     the man Spinoza--Unity and continuity of the person--Man an end not\n     a means--Intellectual necessities and necessities of the heart and\n     the will--Tragic sense of life in men and in peoples           1-18\n\nII\n\nTHE STARTING-POINT\n\n     Tragedy of Paradise--Disease an element of progress--Necessity of\n     knowing in order to live--Instinct of preservation and instinct of\n     perpetuation--The sensible world and the ideal world--Practical\n     starting-point of all philosophy--Knowledge an end in itself?--The\n     man Descartes--The longing not to die                         19-37\n\nIII\n\nTHE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY\n\n     Thirst of being--Cult of immortality--Plato's \"glorious\n     risk\"--Materialism--Paul's discourse to the Athenians--Intolerance\n     of the intellectuals--Craving for fame--Struggle for survival 38-57\n\nIV\n\nTHE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM\n\n     Immortality and resurrection--Development of idea of immortality in\n     Judaic and Hellenic religions--Paul and the dogma of the\n     resurrection--Athanasius--Sacrament of the\n     Eucharist--Lutheranism--Modernism--The Catholic\n     ethic--Scholasticism--The Catholic solution                   58-78\n\nV\n\nTHE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION\n\n     Materialism--Concept of substance--Substantiality of the\n     soul--Berkeley--Myers--Spencer--Combat of life with\n     reason--Theological advocacy--_Odium anti-theologicum_--The\n     rationalist attitude--Spinoza--Nietzsche--Truth and consolation\n                                                                  79-105\n\nVI\n\nIN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS\n\n     Passionate doubt and Cartesian doubt--Irrationality of the problem\n     of immortality--Will and intelligence--Vitalism and\n     rationalism--Uncertainty as basis of faith--The ethic of\n     despair--Pragmatical justification of despair--Summary of preceding\n     criticism                                                   106-131\n\nVII\n\nLOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY\n\n     Sexual love--Spiritual love--Tragic love--Love and\n     pity--Personalizing faculty of love--God the Personalization of the\n     All--Anthropomorphic tendency--Consciousness of the Universe--What\n     is Truth?--Finality of the Universe                         132-155\n\nVIII\n\nFROM GOD TO GOD\n\n     Concept and feeling of Divinity--Pantheism--Monotheism--The\n     rational God--Proofs of God's existence--Law of necessity--Argument\n     from _Consensus gentium_--The living God--Individuality and\n     personality--God a multiplicity--The God of Reason--The God of\n     Love--Existence of God                                      156-185\n\nIX\n\nFAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY\n\n     Personal element in faith--Creative power of faith--Wishing that\n     God may exist--Hope the form of faith--Love and suffering--The\n     suffering God--Consciousness revealed through\n     suffering--Spiritualization of matter                       186-215\n\nX\n\nRELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND, AND THE APOCATASTASIS\n\n     What is religion?--The longing for immortality--Concrete\n     representation of a future life--Beatific vision--St.\n     Teresa--Delight requisite for happiness--Degradation of\n     energy--Apocatastasis--Climax of the tragedy--Mystery of the Beyond\n                                                                 216-259\n\nXI\n\nTHE PRACTICAL PROBLEM\n\n     Conflict as basis of conduct--Injustice of annihilation--Making\n     ourselves irreplaceable--Religious value of the civil\n     occupation--Business of religion and religion of business--Ethic of\n     domination--Ethic of the cloister--Passion and culture--The Spanish\n     soul                                                        260-296\n\nCONCLUSION\n\nDON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY\n\n     Culture--Faust--The modern Inquisition--Spain and the scientific\n     spirit--Cultural achievement of Spain--Thought and language--Don\n     Quixote the hero of Spanish thought--Religion a transcendental\n     economy--Tragic ridicule--Quixotesque philosophy--Mission of Don\n     Quixote to-day                                              297-330\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY ESSAY\n\nDON MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO\n\n\nI sat, several years ago, at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, under the\nvast tent in which the Bard of Wales was being crowned. After the small\ngolden crown had been placed in unsteady equilibrium on the head of a\nclever-looking pressman, several Welsh bards came on the platform and\nrecited little epigrams. A Welsh bard is, if young, a pressman, and if\nof maturer years, a divine. In this case, as England was at war, they\nwere all of the maturer kind, and, while I listened to the music of\ntheir ditties--the sense thereof being, alas! beyond my reach--I was\nstruck by the fact that all of them, though different, closely resembled\nDon Miguel de Unamuno. It is not my purpose to enter into the wasp-nest\nof racial disquisitions. If there is a race in the world over which more\nsense and more nonsense can be freely said for lack of definite\ninformation than the Welsh, it is surely this ancient Basque people,\nwhose greatest contemporary figure is perhaps Don Miguel de Unamuno. I\nam merely setting down that intuitional fact for what it may be worth,\nthough I do not hide my opinion that such promptings of the inner,\nuntutored man are worth more than cavefuls of bones and tombfuls of\nundecipherable papers.\n\nThis reminiscence, moreover, which springs up into the light of my\nmemory every time I think of Don Miguel de Unamuno, has to my mind a\nfurther value in that in it the image of Don Miguel does not appear as\nevoked by one man, but by many, though many of one species, many who in\ndepth are but one man, one type, the Welsh divine. Now, this unity\nunderlying a multiplicity, these many faces, moods, and movements,\ntraceable to one only type, I find deeply connected in my mind with\nUnamuno's person and with what he signifies in Spanish life and letters.\nAnd when I further delve into my impression, I first realize an\nundoubtedly physical relation between the many-one Welsh divines and the\nmany-one Unamuno. A tall, broad-shouldered, bony man, with high cheeks,\na beak-like nose, pointed grey beard, and a complexion the colour of the\nred hematites on which Bilbao, his native town, is built, and which\nBilbao ruthlessly plucks from its very body to exchange for gold in the\nmarkets of England--and in the deep sockets under the high aggressive\nforehead prolonged by short iron-grey hair, two eyes like gimlets\neagerly watching the world through spectacles which seem to be purposely\npointed at the object like microscopes; a fighting expression, but of\nnoble fighting, above the prizes of the passing world, the contempt for\nwhich is shown in a peculiar attire whose blackness invades even that\nlittle triangle of white which worldly men leave on their breast for the\nnecktie of frivolity and the decorations of vanity, and, blinding it,\nleaves but the thinnest rim of white collar to emphasize, rather than\nrelieve, the priestly effect of the whole. Such is Don Miguel de\nUnamuno.\n\nSuch is, rather, his photograph. For Unamuno himself is ever changing. A\ntalker, as all good Spaniards are nowadays, but a talker in earnest and\nwith his heart in it, he is varied, like the subjects of his\nconversation, and, still more, like the passions which they awake in\nhim. And here I find an unsought reason in intellectual support of that\nintuitional observation which I noted down in starting--that Unamuno\nresembles the Welsh in that he is not ashamed of showing his\npassions--a thing which he has often to do, for he is very much alive\nand feels therefore plenty of them. But a word of caution may here be\nnecessary, since that term, \"passion,\" having been diminished--that is,\nmade meaner--by the world, an erroneous impression might be conveyed by\nwhat precedes, of the life and ways of Unamuno. So that it may not be\nsuperfluous to say that Don Miguel de Unamuno is a Professor of Greek in\nthe University of Salamanca, an ex-Rector of it who left behind the\nreputation of being a strong ruler; a father of a numerous family, and a\nman who has sung the quiet and deep joys of married life with a\nrestraint, a vigour, and a nobility which it would be difficult to match\nin any literature. _Yet_ a passionate man--or, as he would perhaps\nprefer to say, _therefore_ a passionate man. But in a major, not in a\nminor key; of strong, not of weak passions.\n\nThe difference between the two lies perhaps in that the man with strong\npassions lives them, while the man with weak passions is lived by them,\nso that while weak passions paralyze the will, strong passions urge man\nto action. It is such an urge towards life, such a vitality ever awake,\nwhich inspires Unamuno's multifarious activities in the realm of the\nmind. The duties of his chair of Greek are the first claim upon his\ntime. But then, his reading is prodigious, as any reader of this book\nwill realize for himself. Not only is he familiar with the\nstock-in-trade of every intellectual worker--the Biblical, Greek, Roman,\nand Italian cultures--but there is hardly anything worth reading in\nEurope and America which he has not read, and, but for the Slav\nlanguages, in the original. Though never out of Spain, and seldom out of\nSalamanca, he has succeeded in establishing direct connections with most\nof the intellectual leaders of the world, and in gathering an\nastonishingly accurate knowledge of the spirit and literature of foreign\npeoples. It was in his library at Salamanca that he once explained to\nan Englishman the meaning of a particular Scotticism in Robert Burns;\nand it was there that he congratulated another Englishman on his having\nread _Rural Rides_, \"the hall-mark,\" he said, \"of the man of letters who\nis no mere man of letters, but also a man.\" From that corner of Castile,\nhe has poured out his spirit in essays, poetry, criticism, novels,\nphilosophy, lectures, and public meetings, and that daily toil of press\narticle writing which is the duty rather than the privilege of most\npresent-day writers in Spain. Such are the many faces, moods, and\nmovements in which Unamuno appears before Spain and the world. And yet,\ndespite this multiplicity and this dispersion, the dominant impression\nwhich his personality leaves behind is that of a vigorous unity, an\nunswerving concentration both of mind and purpose. Bagaria, the national\ncaricaturist, a genius of rhythm and character which the war revealed,\nbut who was too good not to be overshadowed by the facile art of\nRaemaekers (imagine Goya overshadowed by Reynolds!), once represented\nUnamuno as an owl. A marvellous thrust at the heart of Unamuno's\ncharacter. For all this vitality and ever-moving activity of mind is\nshot through by the absolute immobility of two owlish eyes piercing the\ndarkness of spiritual night. And this intense gaze into the mystery is\nthe steel axis round which his spirit revolves and revolves in\ndesperation; the unity under his multiplicity; the one fire under his\npassions and the inspiration of his whole work and life.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was Unamuno himself who once said that the Basque is the alkaloid of\nthe Spaniard. The saying is true, so far as it goes. But it would be\nmore accurate to say \"one of the two alkaloids.\" It is probable that if\nthe Spanish character were analyzed--always provided that the\nMediterranean aspect of it be left aside as a thing apart--two main\nprinciples would be recognized in it--_i.e._, the Basque, richer in\nconcentration, substance, strength; and the Andalusian, more given to\nobservation, grace, form. The two types are to this day socially\nopposed. The Andalusian is a people which has lived down many\ncivilizations, and in which even illiterate peasants possess a kind of\ninnate education. The Basques are a primitive people of mountaineers and\nfishermen, in which even scholars have a peasant-like roughness not\nunlike the roughness of Scotch tweeds--or character. It is the even\nbalancing of these two elements--the force of the Northerner with the\ngrace of the Southerner--which gives the Castilian his admirable poise\nand explains the graceful virility of men such as Fray Luis de Le\u00f3n and\nthe feminine strength of women such as Queen Isabel and Santa Teresa. We\nare therefore led to expect in so forcible a representative of the\nBasque race as Unamuno the more substantial and earnest features of the\nSpanish spirit.\n\nOur expectation is not disappointed. And to begin with it appears in\nthat very concentration of his mind and soul on the mystery of man's\ndestiny on earth. Unamuno is in earnest, in dead earnest, as to this\nmatter. This earnestness is a distinct Spanish, nay, Basque feature in\nhim. There is something of the stern attitude of Loyola about his\n\"tragic sense of life,\" and on this subject--under one form or another,\nhis only subject--he admits no joke, no flippancy, no subterfuge. A true\nheir of those great Spanish saints and mystics whose lifework was\ndevoted to the exploration of the kingdoms of faith, he is more human\nthan they in that he has lost hold of the firm ground where they had\nstuck their anchor. Yet, though loose in the modern world, he refuses to\nbe drawn away from the main business of the Christian, the saving of his\nsoul, which, in his interpretation, means the conquest of his\nimmortality, his own immortality.\n\nAn individualist. Certainly. And he proudly claims the title. Nothing\nmore refreshing in these days of hoggish communistic cant than this\ngreat voice asserting the divine, the eternal rights of the individual.\nBut it is not with political rights that he is concerned. Political\nindividualism, when not a mere blind for the unlimited freedom of civil\nprivateering, is but the outcome of that abstract idea of man which he\nso energetically condemns as pedantic--that is, inhuman. His opposition\nof the individual to society is not that of a puerile anarchist to a no\nless puerile socialist. There is nothing childish about Unamuno. His\nassertion that society is for the individual, not the individual for\nsociety, is made on a transcendental plane. It is not the argument of\nliberty against authority--which can be easily answered on the\nrationalistic plane by showing that authority is in its turn the liberty\nof the social or collective being, a higher, more complex, and\nlonger-living \"individual\" than the individual pure and simple. It is\nrather the unanswerable argument of eternity against duration. Now that\nargument must rest on a religious basis. And it is on a religious basis\nthat Unamuno founds his individualism. Hence the true Spanish flavour of\nhis social theory, which will not allow itself to be set down and\nanalyzed into principles of ethics and politics, with their inevitable\ntendency to degenerate into mere economics, but remains free and fluid\nand absolute, like the spirit.\n\nSuch an individualism has therefore none of the features of that\nchildish half-thinking which inspires most anarchists. It is, on the\ncontrary, based on high thinking, the highest of all, that which refuses\nto dwell on anything less than man's origin and destination. We are here\nconfronted with that humanistic tendency of the Spanish mind which can\nbe observed as the dominant feature of her arts and literature. All\nraces are of course predominantly concerned with man. But they all\nmanifest their concern with a difference. Man is in Spain a concrete\nbeing, the man of flesh and bones, and the whole man. He is neither\nsubtilized into an idea by pure thinking nor civilized into a gentleman\nby social laws and prejudices. Spanish art and letters deal with\nconcrete, tangible persons. Now, there is no more concrete, no more\ntangible person for every one of us than ourself. Unamuno is therefore\nright in the line of Spanish tradition in dealing predominantly--one\nmight almost say always--with his own person. The feeling of the\nawareness of one's own personality has seldom been more forcibly\nexpressed than by Unamuno. This is primarily due to the fact that he is\nhimself obsessed by it. But in his expression of it Unamuno derives also\nsome strength from his own sense of matter and the material--again a\ntypically Spanish element of his character. Thus his human beings are as\nmuch body as soul, or rather body and soul all in one, a union which he\nadmirably renders by bold mixtures of physical and spiritual metaphors,\nas in _gozarse uno la carne del alma_ (to enjoy the flesh of one's own\nsoul).\n\nIn fact, Unamuno, as a true Spaniard which he is, refuses to surrender\nlife to ideas, and that is why he runs shy of abstractions, in which he\nsees but shrouds wherewith we cover dead thoughts. He is solely\nconcerned with his own life, nothing but his life, and the whole of his\nlife. An egotistical position? Perhaps. Unamuno, however, can and does\nanswer the charge. We can only know and feel humanity in the one human\nbeing which we have at hand. It is by penetrating deep into ourselves\nthat we find our brothers in us--branches of the same trunk which can\nonly touch each other by seeking their common origin. This searching\nwithin, Unamuno has undertaken with a sincerity, a fearlessness which\ncannot be excelled. Nowhere will the reader find the inner\ncontradictions of a modern human being, who is at the same time healthy\nand capable of thought set down with a greater respect for truth. Here\nthe uncompromising tendency of the Spanish race, whose eyes never turn\naway from nature, however unwelcome the sight, is strengthened by that\npassion for life which burns in Unamuno. The suppression of the\nslightest thought or feeling for the sake of intellectual order would\nappear to him as a despicable worldly trick. Thus it is precisely\nbecause he does sincerely feel a passionate love of his own life that he\nthinks out with such scrupulous accuracy every argument which he finds\nin his mind--his own mind, a part of his life--against the possibility\nof life after death; but it is also because he feels that, despite such\nconclusive arguments, his will to live perseveres, that he refuses to\nhis intellect the power to kill his faith. A knight-errant of the\nspirit, as he himself calls the Spanish mystics, he starts for his\nadventures after having, like Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s, burnt his ships. But, is it\nnecessary to enhance his figure by literary comparison? He is what he\nwants to be, a man--in the striking expression which he chose as a title\nfor one of his short stories, _nothing less than a whole man_. Not a\nmere thinking machine, set to prove a theory, nor an actor on the world\nstage, singing a well-built poem, well built at the price of many a\ncompromise; but a whole man, with all his affirmations and all his\nnegations, all the pitiless thoughts of a penetrating mind that denies,\nand all the desperate self-assertions of a soul that yearns for eternal\nlife.\n\nThis strife between enemy truths, the truth thought and the truth felt,\nor, as he himself puts it, between veracity and sincerity, is Unamuno's\n_raison d'\u00eatre_. And it is because the \"_Tragic Sense of Life_\" is the\nmost direct expression of it that this book is his masterpiece. The\nconflict is here seen as reflected in the person of the author. The book\nopens by a definition of the Spanish man, the \"man of flesh and bones,\"\nillustrated by the consideration of the real living men who stood behind\nthe bookish figures of great philosophers and consciously or\nunconsciously shaped and misshaped their doctrines in order to satisfy\ntheir own vital yearnings. This is followed by the statement of the will\nto live or hunger for immortality, in the course of which the usual\nsubterfuges with which this all-important issue is evaded in philosophy,\ntheology, or mystic literature, are exposed and the real, concrete,\n\"flesh and bones\" character of the immortality which men desire is\nreaffirmed. The Catholic position is then explained as the _vital_\nattitude in the matter, summed up in Tertullian's _Credo quia absurdum_,\nand this is opposed to the critical attitude which denies the\npossibility of individual survival in the sense previously defined. Thus\nUnamuno leads us to his inner deadlock: his reason can rise no higher\nthan scepticism, and, unable to become vital, dies sterile; his faith,\nexacting anti-rational affirmations and unable therefore to be\napprehended by the logical mind, remains incommunicable. From the bottom\nof this abyss Unamuno builds up his theory of life. But is it a theory?\nUnamuno does not claim for it such an intellectual dignity. He knows too\nwell that in the constructive part of his book his vital self takes the\nleading part and repeatedly warns his reader of the fact, lest critical\nobjections might be raised against this or that assumption or\nself-contradiction. It is on the survival of his will to live, after all\nthe onslaughts of his critical intellect, that he finds the basis for\nhis belief--or rather for his effort to believe. Self-compassion leads\nto self-love, and this self-love, founded as it is on a universal\nconflict, widens into love of all that lives and therefore wants to\nsurvive. So, by an act of love, springing from our own hunger for\nimmortality, we are led to give a conscience to the Universe--that is,\nto create God.\n\nSuch is the process by which Unamuno, from the transcendental pessimism\nof his inner contradiction, extracts an everyday optimism founded on\nlove. His symbol of this attitude is the figure of Don Quixote, of whom\nhe truly says that his creed \"can hardly be called idealism, since he\ndid not fight for ideas: it was spiritualism, for he fought for the\nspirit.\" Thus he opposes a synthetical to an analytical attitude; a\nreligious to an ethico-scientific ideal; Spain, his Spain--_i.e._, the\nspiritual manifestation of the Spanish race--to Europe, his\nEurope--_i.e._, the intellectual manifestation of the white race, which\nhe sees in Franco-Germany; and heroic love, even when comically\nunpractical, to culture, which, in this book, written in 1912, is\nalready prophetically spelt Kultura.\n\nThis courageous work is written in a style which is the man--for\nBuffon's saying, seldom true, applies here to the letter. It is written\nas Carlyle wrote, not merely with the brain, but with the whole soul and\nthe whole body of the man, and in such a vivid manner that one can\nwithout much effort imagine the eager gesticulation which now and then\nunderlines, interprets, despises, argues, denies, and above all asserts.\nIn his absolute subservience to the matter in hand this manner of\nwriting has its great precedent in Santa Teresa. The differences, and\nthey are considerable, are not of art, absent in either case, but of\nnature. They are such deep and obvious differences as obtain between the\ndevout, ignorant, graceful nun of sixteenth-century Avila and the\nfree-thinking, learned, wilful professor of twentieth-century Salamanca.\nIn the one case, as in the other, the language is the most direct and\nsimple required. It is also the least literary and the most popular.\nUnamuno, who lives in close touch with the people, has enriched the\nSpanish literary language by returning to it many a popular term. His\nvocabulary abounds in racy words of the soil, and his writings gain from\nthem an almost peasant-like pith and directness which suits his own\nBasque primitive nature. His expression occurs simultaneously with the\nthoughts and feelings to be expressed, the flow of which, but loosely\ncontrolled by the critical mind, often breaks through the meshes of\nestablished diction and gives birth to new forms created under the\npressure of the moment. This feature Unamuno has also in common with\nSanta Teresa, but what in the Saint was a self-ignorant charm becomes in\nUnamuno a deliberate manner inspired, partly by an acute sense of the\nsymbolical and psychological value of word-connections, partly by that\ngenuine need for expansion of the language which all true original\nthinkers or \"feelers\" must experience, but partly also by an acquired\nhabit of juggling with words which is but natural in a philologist\nendowed with a vigorous imagination. Unamuno revels in words. He\npositively enjoys stretching them beyond their usual meaning, twisting\nthem, composing, opposing, and transposing them in all sorts of possible\nways. This game--not wholly unrewarded now and then by striking\nintellectual finds--seems to be the only relaxation which he allows his\nusually austere mind. It certainly is the only light feature of a style\nthe merit of which lies in its being the close-fitting expression of a\ngreat mind earnestly concentrated on a great idea.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe earnestness, the intensity, and the oneness of his predominant\npassion are the main cause of the strength of Unamuno's philosophic\nwork. They remain his main asset, yet become also the principal cause of\nhis weakness, as a creative artist. Great art can only flourish in the\ntemperate zone of the passions, on the return journey from the torrid.\nUnamuno, as a creator, has none of the failings of those artists who\nhave never felt deeply. But he does show the limitations of those\nartists who cannot cool down. And the most striking of them is that at\nbottom he is seldom able to put himself in a purely esthetical mood. In\nthis, as in many other features, Unamuno curiously resembles\nWordsworth--whom, by the way, he is one of the few Spaniards to read\nand appreciate.[1] Like him, Unamuno is an essentially purposeful and\nutilitarian mind. Of the two qualities which the work of art requires\nfor its inception--earnestness and detachment--both Unamuno and\nWordsworth possess the first; both are deficient in the second. Their\ninterest in their respective leading thought--survival in the first,\nvirtue in the second--is too direct, too pressing, to allow them the\n\"distance\" necessary for artistic work. Both are urged to work by a\nlofty utilitarianism--the search for God through the individual soul in\nUnamuno, the search for God through the social soul in Wordsworth--so\nthat their thoughts and sensations are polarized and their spirit loses\nthat impartial transparence for nature's lights without which no great\nart is possible. Once suggested, this parallel is too rich in sidelights\nto be lightly dropped. This single-mindedness which distinguishes them\nexplains that both should have consciously or unconsciously chosen a\nlife of semi-seclusion, for Unamuno lives in Salamanca very much as\nWordsworth lived in the Lake District--\n\n                       in a still retreat\n    Sheltered, but not to social duties lost,\n\nhence in both a certain proclivity towards ploughing a solitary furrow\nand becoming self-centred. There are no doubt important differences. The\nEnglishman's sense of nature is both keener and more concrete; while the\nSpaniard's knowledge of human nature is not barred by the subtle\ninhibitions and innate limitations which tend to blind its more\nunpleasant aspects to the eye of the Englishman. There is more courage\nand passion in the Spaniard; more harmony and goodwill in the\nEnglishman; the one is more like fire, the other like light. For\nWordsworth, a poem is above all an essay, a means for conveying a lesson\nin forcible and easily remembered terms to those who are in need of\nimprovement. For Unamuno, a poem or a novel (and he holds that a novel\nis but a poem) is the outpouring of a man's passion, the overflow of the\nheart which cannot help itself and lets go. And it may be that the\nessential difference between the two is to be found in this difference\nbetween their respective purposes: Unamuno's purpose is more intimately\npersonal and individual; Wordsworth's is more social and objective. Thus\nboth miss the temperate zone, where emotion takes shape into the moulds\nof art; but while Wordsworth is driven by his ideal of social service\nthis side of it, into the cold light of both moral and intellectual\nself-control, Unamuno remains beyond, where the molten metal is too near\nthe fire of passion, and cannot cool down into shape.\n\nUnamuno is therefore not unlike Wordsworth in the insufficiency of his\nsense of form. We have just seen the essential cause of this\ninsufficiency to lie in the nonesthetical attitude of his mind, and we\nhave tried to show one of the roots of such an attitude in the very\nloftiness and earnestness of his purpose. Yet, there are others, for\nliving nature is many-rooted as it is many-branched. It cannot be\ndoubted that a certain refractoriness to form is a typical feature of\nthe Basque character. The sense of form is closely in sympathy with the\nfeminine element in human nature, and the Basque race is strongly\nmasculine. The predominance of the masculine element--strength without\ngrace--is as typical of Unamuno as it is of Wordsworth. The literary\ngifts which might for the sake of synthesis be symbolized in a smile are\nabsent in both. There is as little humour in the one as in the other.\nHumour, however, sometimes occurs in Unamuno, but only in his\nill-humoured moments, and then with a curious bite of its own which adds\nan unconscious element to its comic effect. Grace only visits them in\nmoments of inspiration, and then it is of a noble character, enhanced as\nit is by the ever-present gift of strength. And as for the sense for\nrhythm and music, both Unamuno and Wordsworth seem to be limited to the\nmost vigorous and masculine gaits. This feature is particularly\npronounced in Unamuno, for while Wordsworth is painstaking,\nall-observant, and too good a \"teacher\" to underestimate the importance\nof pleasure in man's progress, Unamuno knows no compromise. His aim is\nnot to please but to strike, and he deliberately seeks the naked, the\nforceful, even the brutal word for truth. There is in him, however, a\ncause of formlessness from which Wordsworth is free--namely, an\neagerness for sincerity and veracity which brushes aside all\npreparation, ordering or planning of ideas as suspect of \"dishing up,\"\nintellectual trickery, and juggling with spontaneous truths.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch qualities--both the positive and the negative--are apparent in his\npoetry. In it, the appeal of force and sincerity is usually stronger\nthan that of art. This is particularly the case in his first volume\n(_Poes\u00edas_, 1907), in which a lofty inspiration, a noble attitude of\nmind, a rich and racy vocabulary, a keen insight into the spirit of\nplaces, and above all the overflowing vitality of a strong man in the\nforce of ripeness, contend against the still awkward gait of the Basque\nand a certain rebelliousness of rhyme. The dough of the poetic language\nis here seen heavily pounded by a powerful hand, bent on reducing its\nangularities and on improving its plasticity. Nor do we need to wait for\nfurther works in order to enjoy the reward of such efforts, for it is\nattained in this very volume more than once, as for instance in _Muere\nen el mar el ave que vol\u00f3 del nido_, a beautiful poem in which emotion\nand thought are happily blended into exquisite form.\n\nIn his last poem, _El Cristo de Vel\u00e1zquez_ (1920), Unamuno undertakes\nthe task of giving a poetical rendering of his tragic sense of life, in\nthe form of a meditation on the Christ of Vel\u00e1zquez, the beautiful and\npathetic picture in the Prado. Why Vel\u00e1zquez's and not Christ himself?\nThe fact is that, though in his references to actual forms, Unamuno\nclosely follows Vel\u00e1zquez's picture, the spiritual interpretation of it\nwhich he develops as the poem unfolds itself is wholly personal. It\nwould be difficult to find two great Spaniards wider apart than Unamuno\nand Vel\u00e1zquez, for if Unamuno is the very incarnation of the masculine\nspirit of the North--all strength and substance--Vel\u00e1zquez is the image\nof the feminine spirit of the South--all grace and form. Vel\u00e1zquez is a\nlimpid mirror, with a human depth, yet a mirror. That Unamuno has\ndeparted from the image of Christ which the great Sevillian reflected on\nhis immortal canvas was therefore to be expected. But then Unamuno has,\nwhile speaking of Don Quixote, whom he has also freely and personally\ninterpreted,[2] taken great care to point out that a work of art is, for\neach of us, all that we see in it. And, moreover, Unamuno has not so\nmuch departed from Vel\u00e1zquez's image of Christ as delved into its\ndepths, expanded, enlarged it, or, if you prefer, seen in its limpid\nsurface the immense figure of his own inner Christ. However free and\nunorthodox in its wide scope of images and ideas, the poem is in its\nform a regular meditation in the manner approved by the Catholic Church,\nand it is therefore meet that it should rise from a concrete, tangible\nobject as it is recommended to the faithful. To this concrete character\nof its origin, the poem owes much of its suggestiveness, as witness the\nfollowing passage quoted here, with a translation sadly unworthy of the\noriginal, as being the clearest link between the poetical meditation\nand the main thought that underlies all the work and the life of\nUnamuno.\n\nNUBE NEGRA\n\n    O es que una nube negra de los cielos\n    ese negror le di\u00f3 a tu cabellera\n    de nazareno, cual de mustio sauce\n    de una noche sin luna sobre el r\u00edo?\n    \u00bfEs la sombra del ala sin perfiles\n    del \u00e1ngel de la nada negadora,\n    de Luzbel, que en su ca\u00edda inacabable\n    --fondo no puede dar--su eterna cuita\n    clava en tu frente, en tu raz\u00f3n? \u00bfSe vela,\n    el claro Verbo en Ti con esa nube,\n    negra cual de Luzbel las negras alas,\n    mientras brilla el Amor, todo desnudo,\n    con tu desnudo pecho por cendal?\n\nBLACK CLOUD\n\n    Or was it then that a black cloud from heaven\n    Such blackness gave to your Nazarene's hair,\n    As of a languid willow o'er the river\n    Brooding in moonless night? Is it the shadow\n    Of the profileless wing of Luzbel, the Angel\n    Of denying nothingness, endlessly falling--\n    Bottom he ne'er can touch--whose grief eternal\n    He nails on to Thy forehead, to Thy reason?\n    Is the clear Word in Thee with that cloud veiled\n    --A cloud as black as the black wings of Luzbel--\n    While Love shines naked within Thy naked breast?\n\nThe poem, despite its length, easily maintains this lofty level\nthroughout, and if he had written nothing else Unamuno would still\nremain as having given to Spanish letters the noblest and most sustained\nlyrical flight in the language. It abounds in passages of ample beauty\nand often strikes a note of primitive strength in the true Old Testament\nstyle. It is most distinctively a poem in a major key, in a group with\n_Paradise Lost_ and _The Excursion_, but in a tone halfway between the\ntwo; and, as coming from the most Northern-minded and substantial poet\nthat Spain ever had, wholly free from that tendency towards\ngrandiloquence and Ciceronian drapery which blighted previous similar\nefforts in Spain. Its weakness lies in a certain monotony due to the\ninterplay of Unamuno's two main limitations as an artist: the absolute\nsurrender to one dominant thought and a certain deficiency of form\nbordering here on contempt. The plan is but a loose sequence of\nmeditations on successive aspects of Christ as suggested by images or\nadvocations of His divine person, or even of parts of His human body:\nLion, Bull, Lily, Sword, Crown, Head, Knees. Each meditation is treated\nin a period of blank verse, usually of a beautiful texture, the\nsplendour of which is due less to actual images than to the inner vigour\nof ideas and the eagerness with which even the simplest facts are\ninterpreted into significant symbols. Yet, sometimes, this blank verse\nbecomes hard and stony under the stubborn hammering of a too insistent\nmind, and the device of ending each meditation with a line accented on\nits last syllable tends but to increase the monotony of the whole.\n\nBlank verse is never the best medium for poets of a strong masculine\ninspiration, for it does not sufficiently correct their usual deficiency\nin form. Such poets are usually at their best when they bind themselves\nto the discipline of existing forms and particularly when they limit the\nmovements of their muse to the \"sonnet's scanty plot of ground.\"\nUnamuno's best poetry, as Wordsworth's, is in his sonnets. His _Rosario\nde Sonetos L\u00edricos_, published in 1911, contains some of the finest\nsonnets in the Spanish language. There is variety in this volume--more\nat least than is usual in Unamuno: from comments on events of local\npolitics (sonnet lii.) which savour of the more prosaic side of\nWordsworth, to meditations on space and time such as that sonnet\nxxxvii., so reminiscent of Shelley's _Ozymandias of Egypt_; from a\nsuggestive homily to a \"Don Juan of Ideas\" whose thirst for knowledge is\n\"not love of truth, but intellectual lust,\" and whose \"thought is\ntherefore sterile\" (sonnet cvii.), to an exquisitely rendered moonlight\nlove scene (sonnet civ.). The author's main theme itself, which of\ncourse occupies a prominent part in the series, appears treated under\nmany different lights and in genuinely poetical moods which truly do\njustice to the inherent wealth of poetical inspiration which it\ncontains. Many a sonnet might be quoted here, and in particular that\nsombre and fateful poem _Nihil Novum sub Sole_ (cxxiii.), which defeats\nits own theme by the striking originality of its inspiration.\n\nSo active, so positive is the inspiration of this poetry that the\nquestion of outside influences does not even arise. Unamuno is probably\nthe Spanish contemporary poet whose manner owes least, if anything at\nall, to modern developments of poetry such as those which take their\nsource in Baudelaire and Verlaine. These over-sensitive and over-refined\nartists have no doubt enriched the sensuous, the formal, the\nsentimental, even the intellectual aspects of verse with an admirable\nvariety of exquisite shades, lacking which most poetry seems\nold-fashioned to the fastidious palate of modern men. Unamuno is too\ngenuine a representative of the spiritual and masculine variety of\nSpanish genius, ever impervious to French, and generally, to\nintellectual, influences, to be affected by the esthetic excellence of\nthis art. Yet, for all his disregard of the modern resources which it\nadds to the poetic craft, Unamuno loses none of his modernity. He is\nindeed more than modern. When, as he often does, he strikes the true\npoetic note, he is outside time. His appeal is not in complexity but in\nstrength. He is not refined: he is final.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the Preface to his _Tres Novelas Ejemplares y un Pr\u00f3logo_ (1921)\nUnamuno says: \" ... novelist--that is, poet ... a novel--that is, a\npoem.\" Thus, with characteristic decision, he sides with the lyrical\nconception of the novel. There is of course an infinite variety of\ntypes of novels. But they can probably all be reduced to two\nclasses--_i.e._, the dramatic or objective, and the lyrical or\nsubjective, according to the mood or inspiration which predominates in\nthem. The present trend of the world points towards the dramatic or\nobjective type. This type is more in tune with the detached and\nscientific character of the age. The novel is often nowadays considered\nas a document, a \"slice of life,\" a piece of information, a literary\nphotograph representing places and people which purse or time prevents\nus from seeing with our own eyes. It is obvious, given what we now know\nof him, that such a view of the novel cannot appeal to Unamuno. He is a\nutilitarian, but not of worldly utilities. His utilitarianism transcends\nour daily wants and seeks to provide for our eternal ones. He is,\nmoreover, a mind whose workings turn in spiral form towards a central\nidea and therefore feels an instinctive antagonism to the dispersive\nhabits of thought and sensation which such detailed observation of life\nusually entails. For at bottom the opposition between the lyrical and\nthe dramatic novel may be reduced to that between the poet and the\ndramatist. Both the dramatist and the poet create in order to link up\ntheir soul and the world in one complete circle of experience, but this\ncircle is travelled in opposite directions. The poet goes inwards first,\nthen out to nature full of his inner experience, and back home. The\ndramatist goes outwards first, then comes back to himself, his harvest\nof wisdom gathered in reality. It is the recognition of his own lyrical\ninward-looking nature which makes Unamuno pronounce the identity of the\nnovel and the poem.\n\nWhatever we may think of it as a general theory, there is little doubt\nthat this opinion is in the main sound in so far as it refers to\nUnamuno's own work. His novels are created within. They are--and their\nauthor is the first to declare it so--novels which happen in the\nkingdom of the spirit. Outward points of reference in time and space\nare sparingly given--in fact, reduced to a bare minimum. In some of\nthem, as for instance _Niebla_ (1914), the name of the town in which the\naction takes place is not given, and such scanty references to the\ntopography and general features as are supplied would equally apply to\nany other provincial town of Spain. Action, in the current sense of the\nword, is correspondingly simplified, since the material and local\nelements on which it usually exerts itself are schematized, and in their\nturn made, as it were, spiritual. Thus a street, a river of colour for\nsome, for others a series of accurately described shops and dwellings,\nbecomes in Unamuno (see _Niebla_) a loom where the passions and desires\nof men and women cross and recross each other and weave the cloth of\ndaily life. Even the physical description of characters is reduced to a\nstandard of utmost simplicity. So that, in fine, Unamuno's novels, by\neliminating all other material, appear, if the boldness of the metaphor\nbe permitted, as the spiritual skeletons of novels, conflicts between\nsouls.\n\nNor is this the last stage in his deepening and narrowing of the\ncreative furrow. For these souls are in their turn concentrated so that\nthe whole of their vitality burns into one passion. If a somewhat\nfanciful comparison from another art may throw any light on this feature\nof his work we might say that his characters are to those of Gald\u00f3s, for\ninstance, as counterpoint music to the complex modern symphony. Joaqu\u00edn\nMonegro, the true hero of his _Abel S\u00e1nchez_ (1917), is the\npersonification of hatred. Raquel in _Dos Madres_[1] and Catalina in _El\nMarqu\u00e9s de Lumbr\u00eda_[1] are two widely different but vigorous, almost\nbarbarous, \"maternities.\" Alejandro, the hero of his powerful _Nada\nMenos que Todo un Hombre_,[3] is masculine will, pure and unconquerable,\nsave by death. Further still, in most if not all of his main\ncharacters, we can trace the dominant passion which is their whole being\nto a mere variety of the one and only passion which obsesses Unamuno\nhimself, the hunger for life, a full life, here and after. Here is, for\ninstance, _Abel S\u00e1nchez_, a sombre study of hatred, a modern paraphrase\nof the story of Cain. Joaqu\u00edn Monegro, the Cain of the novel, has been\nreading Byron's poem, and writes in his diary: \"It was when I read how\nLucifer declared to Cain that he, Cain, was immortal, that I began in\nterror to wonder whether I also was immortal and whether in me would be\nalso immortal my hatred. 'Have I a soul?' I said to myself then. 'Is\nthis my hatred soul?' And I came to think that it could not be\notherwise, that such a hatred cannot be the function of a body.... A\ncorruptible organism could not hate as I hated.\"\n\nThus Joaqu\u00edn Monegro, like every other main character in his work,\nappears preoccupied by the same central preoccupation of Unamuno. In one\nword, all Unamuno's characters are but incarnations of himself. But that\nis what we expected to find in a lyrical novelist.\n\nThere are critics who conclude from this observation that these\ncharacters do not exist, that they are mere arguments on legs,\npersonified ideas. Here and there, in Unamuno's novels, there are\npassages which lend some colour of plausibility to this view. Yet, it is\nin my opinion mistaken. Unamuno's characters may be schematized,\nstripped of their complexities, reduced to the mainspring of their\nnature; they may, moreover, reveal mainsprings made of the same steel.\nBut that they are alive no one could deny who has a sense for life. The\nvery restraint in the use of physical details which Unamuno has made a\nfeature of his creative work may have led his critics to forget the\nintensity of those--admirably chosen--which are given. It is significant\nthat the eyes play an important part in his description of characters\nand in his narrative too. His sense of the interpenetration of body and\nsoul is so deep that he does not for one moment let us forget how bodily\nhis \"souls\" are, and how pregnant with spiritual significance is every\none of their words and gestures. No. These characters are not arguments\non legs. They truly are men and women of \"flesh and bones,\" human,\nterribly human.\n\nIn thus emphasizing a particular feature in their nature, Unamuno\nimparts to his creations a certain deformity which savours of romantic\ndays. Yet Unamuno is not a romanticist, mainly because Romanticism was\nan esthetic attitude, and his attitude is seldom purely esthetic. For\nall their show of passion, true Romanticists seldom gave their real\nselves to their art. They created a stage double of their own selves for\npublic exhibitions. They sought the picturesque. Their form was lyrical,\nbut their substance was dramatic. Unamuno, on the contrary, even though\nhe often seeks expression in dramatic form, is essentially lyrical. And\nif he is always intense, he never is exuberant. He follows the Spanish\ntradition for restraint--for there is one, along its opposite tradition\nfor grandiloquence--and, true to the spirit of it, he seeks the maximum\nof effect through the minimum of means. Then, he never shouts. Here is\nan example of his quiet method, the rhythmical beauty of which is\nunfortunately almost untranslatable:\n\n\"Y as\u00ed pasaron d\u00edas de llanto y de negrura hasta que las l\u00e1grimas fueron\ny\u00e9ndose hacia adentro y la casa fu\u00e9 derritiendo los negrores\" (_Niebla_)\n(And thus, days of weeping and mourning went by, till the tears began to\nflow inward and the blackness to melt in the home).\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMiguel de Unamuno is to-day the greatest literary figure of Spain.\nBaroja may surpass him in variety of external experience, Azor\u00edn in\ndelicate art, Ortega y Gasset in philosophical subtlety, Ayala in\nintellectual elegance, Valle Incl\u00e1n in rhythmical grace. Even in\nvitality he may have to yield the first place to that over-whelming\nathlete of literature, Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez. But Unamuno is head and shoulders\nabove them all in the highness of his purpose and in the earnestness and\nloyalty with which, Quixote-like, he has served all through his life his\nunattainable Dulcinea. Then there is another and most important reason\nwhich explains his position as first, _princeps_, of Spanish letters,\nand it is that Unamuno, by the cross which he has chosen to bear,\nincarnates the spirit of modern Spain. His eternal conflict between\nfaith and reason, between life and thought, between spirit and\nintellect, between heaven and civilization, is the conflict of Spain\nherself. A border country, like Russia, in which East and West mix their\nspiritual waters, Spain wavers between two life-philosophies and cannot\nrest. In Russia, this conflict emerges in literature during the\nnineteenth century, when Dostoievsky and Tolstoy stand for the East\nwhile Turgeniev becomes the West's advocate. In Spain, a country less\narticulate, and, moreover, a country in which the blending of East and\nWest is more intimate, for both found a common solvent in centuries of\nLatin civilization, the conflict is less clear, less on the surface.\nTo-day Ortega y Gasset is our Turgeniev--not without mixture. Unamuno is\nour Dostoievsky, but painfully aware of the strength of the other side\nwithin him, and full of misgivings. Nor is it sure that when we speak of\nEast in this connection we really mean East. There is a third country in\nEurope in which the \"Eastern\" view is as forcibly put and as deeply\nunderstood as the \"Western,\" a third border country--England. England,\nparticularly in those of her racial elements conventionally named\nCeltic, is closely in sympathy with the \"East.\" Ireland is almost purely\n\"Eastern\" in this respect. That is perhaps why Unamuno feels so strong\nan attraction for the English language and its literature, and why, even\nto this day, he follows so closely the movements of English thought.[4]\nFor his own nature, of a human being astride two enemy ideals, draws him\ninstinctively towards minds equally placed in opposition, yet a\nco-operating opposition, to progress. Thus Unamuno, whose literary\nqualities and defects make him a genuine representative of the more\nmasculine variety of the Spanish genius, becomes in his spiritual life\nthe true living symbol of his country and his time. And that he is great\nenough to bear this incarnation is a sufficient measure of his\ngreatness.\n\nS. DE MADARIAGA.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] In what follows, I confess to refer not so much to the generally\nadmitted opinion on Wordsworth as to my own views on him and his poetry,\nwhich I tried to explain in my essay: \"The Case of Wordsworth\" (_Shelley\nand Calder\u00f3n, and other Essays_, Constable and Co., 1920).\n\n[2] _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, explicada y comentada_, por M. de\nUnamuno: Madrid, Fernando F\u00e9, 1905.\n\n[3] These three novels appeared together as _Tres Novelas y un Pr\u00f3logo_\nCalpe, Madrid, 1921.\n\n[4] \"Me va interesando ese Dean Inge,\" he wrote to me last year.\n\n\n\n\nAUTHOR'S PREFACE\n\n\nI intended at first to write a short Prologue to this English\ntranslation of my _Del Sentimiento Tr\u00e1gico de la Vida_, which has been\nundertaken by my friend Mr. J.E. Crawford Flitch. But upon further\nconsideration I have abandoned the idea, for I reflected that after all\nI wrote this book not for Spaniards only, but for all civilized and\nChristian men--Christian in particular, whether consciously so or\nnot--of whatever country they may be.\n\nFurthermore, if I were to set about writing an Introduction in the light\nof all that we see and feel now, after the Great War, and, still more,\nof what we foresee and forefeel, I should be led into writing yet\nanother book. And that is a thing to be done with deliberation and only\nafter having better digested this terrible peace, which is nothing else\nbut the war's painful convalescence.\n\nAs for many years my spirit has been nourished upon the very core of\nEnglish literature--evidence of which the reader may discover in the\nfollowing pages--the translator, in putting my _Sentimiento Tr\u00e1gico_\ninto English, has merely converted not a few of the thoughts and\nfeelings therein expressed back into their original form of expression.\nOr retranslated them, perhaps. Whereby they emerge other than they\noriginally were, for an idea does not pass from one language to another\nwithout change.\n\nThe fact that this English translation has been carefully revised here,\nin my house in this ancient city of Salamanca, by the translator and\nmyself, implies not merely some guarantee of exactitude, but also\nsomething more--namely, a correction, in certain respects, of the\noriginal.\n\nThe truth is that, being an incorrigible Spaniard, I am naturally given\nto a kind of extemporization and to neglectfulness of a filed niceness\nin my works. For this reason my original work--and likewise the Italian\nand French translations of it--issued from the press with a certain\nnumber of errors, obscurities, and faulty references. The labour which\nmy friend Mr. J.E. Crawford Flitch fortunately imposed upon me in making\nme revise his translation obliged me to correct these errors, to clarify\nsome obscurities, and to give greater exactitude to certain quotations\nfrom foreign writers. Hence this English translation of my _Sentimiento\nTr\u00e1gico_ presents in some ways a more purged and correct text than that\nof the original Spanish. This perhaps compensates for what it may lose\nin the spontaneity of my Spanish thought, which at times, I believe, is\nscarcely translatable.\n\nIt would advantage me greatly if this translation, in opening up to me a\npublic of English-speaking readers, should some day lead to my writing\nsomething addressed to and concerned with this public. For just as a new\nfriend enriches our spirit, not so much by what he gives us of himself,\nas by what he causes us to discover in our own selves, something which,\nif we had never known him, would have lain in us undeveloped, so it is\nwith a new public. Perhaps there may be regions in my own Spanish\nspirit--my Basque spirit, and therefore doubly Spanish--unexplored by\nmyself, some corner hitherto uncultivated, which I should have to\ncultivate in order to offer the flowers and fruits of it to the peoples\nof English speech.\n\nAnd now, no more.\n\nGod give my English readers that inextinguishable thirst for truth which\nI desire for myself.\n\nMIGUEL DE UNAMUNO.\n\nSALAMANCA,\n_April, 1921._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTRANSLATOR'S NOTE\n\nFootnotes added by the Translator, other than those which merely\nsupplement references to writers or their works mentioned in the text,\nare distinguished by his initials.\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE\n\n\n_Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto_, said the Latin playwright.\nAnd I would rather say, _Nullum hominem a me alienum puto_: I am a man;\nno other man do I deem a stranger. For to me the adjective _humanus_ is\nno less suspect than its abstract substantive _humanitas_, humanity.\nNeither \"the human\" nor \"humanity,\" neither the simple adjective nor the\nsubstantivized adjective, but the concrete substantive--man. The man of\nflesh and bone; the man who is born, suffers, and dies--above all, who\ndies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and\nwills; the man who is seen and heard; the brother, the real brother.\n\nFor there is another thing which is also called man, and he is the\nsubject of not a few lucubrations, more or less scientific. He is the\nlegendary featherless biped, the _z\u00f4on politikhon_ of Aristotle,\nthe social contractor of Rousseau, the _homo economicus_ of the\nManchester school, the _homo sapiens_ of Linn\u00e6us, or, if you like, the\nvertical mammal. A man neither of here nor there, neither of this age\nnor of another, who has neither sex nor country, who is, in brief,\nmerely an idea. That is to say, a no-man.\n\nThe man we have to do with is the man of flesh and bone--I, you, reader\nof mine, the other man yonder, all of us who walk solidly on the earth.\n\nAnd this concrete man, this man of flesh and bone, is at once the\nsubject and the supreme object of all philosophy, whether certain\nself-styled philosophers like it or not.\n\nIn most of the histories of philosophy that I know, philosophic systems\nare presented to us as if growing out of one another spontaneously, and\ntheir authors, the philosophers, appear only as mere pretexts. The inner\nbiography of the philosophers, of the men who philosophized, occupies a\nsecondary place. And yet it is precisely this inner biography that\nexplains for us most things.\n\nIt behoves us to say, before all, that philosophy lies closer to poetry\nthan to science. All philosophic systems which have been constructed as\na supreme concord of the final results of the individual sciences have\nin every age possessed much less consistency and life than those which\nexpressed the integral spiritual yearning of their authors.\n\nAnd, though they concern us so greatly, and are, indeed, indispensable\nfor our life and thought, the sciences are in a certain sense more\nforeign to us than philosophy. They fulfil a more objective end--that is\nto say, an end more external to ourselves. They are fundamentally a\nmatter of economics. A new scientific discovery, of the kind called\ntheoretical, is, like a mechanical discovery--that of the steam-engine,\nthe telephone, the phonograph, or the aeroplane--a thing which is useful\nfor something else. Thus the telephone may be useful to us in enabling\nus to communicate at a distance with the woman we love. But she,\nwherefore is she useful to us? A man takes an electric tram to go to\nhear an opera, and asks himself, Which, in this case, is the more\nuseful, the tram or the opera?\n\nPhilosophy answers to our need of forming a complete and unitary\nconception of the world and of life, and as a result of this conception,\na feeling which gives birth to an inward attitude and even to outward\naction. But the fact is that this feeling, instead of being a\nconsequence of this conception, is the cause of it. Our\nphilosophy--that is, our mode of understanding or not understanding the\nworld and life--springs from our feeling towards life itself. And life,\nlike everything affective, has roots in subconsciousness, perhaps in\nunconsciousness.\n\nIt is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it\nis our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps\npathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas.\n\nMan is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been\ndefined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which\ndifferentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason.\nMore often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps\nor laughs inwardly--but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves\nequations of the second degree.\n\nAnd thus, in a philosopher, what must needs most concern us is the man.\n\nTake Kant, the man Immanuel Kant, who was born and lived at K\u00f6nigsberg,\nin the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the\nnineteenth. In the philosophy of this man Kant, a man of heart and\nhead--that is to say, a man--there is a significant somersault, as\nKierkegaard, another man--and what a man!--would have said, the\nsomersault from the _Critique of Pure Reason_ to the _Critique of\nPractical Reason_. He reconstructs in the latter what he destroyed in\nthe former, in spite of what those may say who do not see the man\nhimself. After having examined and pulverized with his analysis the\ntraditional proofs of the existence of God, of the Aristotelian God, who\nis the God corresponding to the _z\u00f4on politikon_, the abstract\nGod, the unmoved prime Mover, he reconstructs God anew; but the God of\nthe conscience, the Author of the moral order--the Lutheran God, in\nshort. This transition of Kant exists already in embryo in the Lutheran\nnotion of faith.\n\nThe first God, the rational God, is the projection to the outward\ninfinite of man as he is by definition--that is to say, of the abstract\nman, of the man no-man; the other God, the God of feeling and volition,\nis the projection to the inward infinite of man as he is by life, of the\nconcrete man, the man of flesh and bone.\n\nKant reconstructed with the heart that which with the head he had\noverthrown. And we know, from the testimony of those who knew him and\nfrom his testimony in his letters and private declarations, that the man\nKant, the more or less selfish old bachelor who professed philosophy at\nK\u00f6nigsberg at the end of the century of the Encyclopedia and the goddess\nof Reason, was a man much preoccupied with the problem--I mean with the\nonly real vital problem, the problem that strikes at the very root of\nour being, the problem of our individual and personal destiny, of the\nimmortality of the soul. The man Kant was not resigned to die utterly.\nAnd because he was not resigned to die utterly he made that leap, that\nimmortal somersault,[5] from the one Critique to the other.\n\nWhosoever reads the _Critique of Practical Reason_ carefully and without\nblinkers will see that, in strict fact, the existence of God is therein\ndeduced from the immortality of the soul, and not the immortality of the\nsoul from the existence of God. The categorical imperative leads us to a\nmoral postulate which necessitates in its turn, in the teleological or\nrather eschatological order, the immortality of the soul, and in order\nto sustain this immortality God is introduced. All the rest is the\njugglery of the professional of philosophy.\n\nThe man Kant felt that morality was the basis of eschatology, but the\nprofessor of philosophy inverted the terms.\n\nAnother professor, the professor and man William James, has somewhere\nsaid that for the generality of men God is the provider of immortality.\nYes, for the generality of men, including the man Kant, the man James,\nand the man who writes these lines which you, reader, are reading.\n\nTalking to a peasant one day, I proposed to him the hypothesis that\nthere might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, a\nConsciousness[6] of the Universe, but that for all that the soul of\nevery man may not be immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. He\nreplied: \"Then wherefore God?\" So answered, in the secret tribunal of\ntheir consciousness, the man Kant and the man James. Only in their\ncapacity as professors they were compelled to justify rationally an\nattitude in itself so little rational. Which does not mean, of course,\nthat the attitude is absurd.\n\nHegel made famous his aphorism that all the rational is real and all the\nreal rational; but there are many of us who, unconvinced by Hegel,\ncontinue to believe that the real, the really real, is irrational, that\nreason builds upon irrationalities. Hegel, a great framer of\ndefinitions, attempted with definitions to reconstruct the universe,\nlike that artillery sergeant who said that cannon were made by taking a\nhole and enclosing it with steel.\n\nAnother man, the man Joseph Butler, the Anglican bishop who lived at the\nbeginning of the eighteenth century and whom Cardinal Newman declared to\nbe the greatest man in the Anglican Church, wrote, at the conclusion of\nthe first chapter of his great work, _The Analogy of Religion_, the\nchapter which treats of a future life, these pregnant words: \"This\ncredibility of a future life, which has been here insisted upon, how\nlittle soever it may satisfy our curiosity, seems to answer all the\npurposes of religion, in like manner as a demonstrative proof would.\nIndeed a proof, even a demonstrative one, of a future life, would not be\na proof of religion. For, that we are to live hereafter, is just as\nreconcilable with the scheme of atheism, and as well to be accounted for\nby it, as that we are now alive is: and therefore nothing can be more\nabsurd than to argue from that scheme that there can be no future\nstate.\"\n\nThe man Butler, whose works were perhaps known to the man Kant, wished\nto save the belief in the immortality of the soul, and with this object\nhe made it independent of belief in God. The first chapter of his\n_Analogy_ treats, as I have said, of the future life, and the second of\nthe government of God by rewards and punishments. And the fact is that,\nfundamentally, the good Anglican bishop deduces the existence of God\nfrom the immortality of the soul. And as this deduction was the good\nAnglican bishop's starting-point, he had not to make that somersault\nwhich at the close of the same century the good Lutheran philosopher had\nto make. Butler, the bishop, was one man and Kant, the professor,\nanother man.\n\nTo be a man is to be something concrete, unitary, and substantive; it is\nto be a thing--_res_. Now we know what another man, the man Benedict\nSpinoza, that Portuguese Jew who was born and lived in Holland in the\nmiddle of the seventeenth century, wrote about the nature of things. The\nsixth proposition of Part III. of his _Ethic_ states: _unaquoeque res,\nquatenus in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur_--that is,\nEverything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its\nown being. Everything in so far as it is in itself--that is to say, in\nso far as it is substance, for according to him substance is _id quod in\nse est et per se concipitur_--that which is in itself and is conceived\nby itself. And in the following proposition, the seventh, of the same\npart, he adds: _conatus, quo unaquoeque res in suo esse perseverare\nconatur, nihil est proeter ipsius rei actualem essentiam_--that is, the\nendeavour wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being is\nnothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. This means that your\nessence, reader, mine, that of the man Spinoza, that of the man Butler,\nof the man Kant, and of every man who is a man, is nothing but the\nendeavour, the effort, which he makes to continue to be a man, not to\ndie. And the other proposition which follows these two, the eighth,\nsays: _conatus, quo unaquoeque res in suo esse perseverare conatur,\nnullum tempus finitum, sed indefinitum involvit_--that is, The endeavour\nwhereby each individual thing endeavours to persist involves no finite\ntime but indefinite time. That is to say that you, I, and Spinoza wish\nnever to die and that this longing of ours never to die is our actual\nessence. Nevertheless, this poor Portuguese Jew, exiled in the mists of\nHolland, could never attain to believing in his own personal\nimmortality, and all his philosophy was but a consolation which he\ncontrived for his lack of faith. Just as other men have a pain in hand\nor foot, heart-ache or head-ache, so he had God-ache. Unhappy man! And\nunhappy fellow-men!\n\nAnd man, this thing, is he a thing? How absurd soever the question may\nappear, there are some who have propounded it. Not long ago there went\nabroad a certain doctrine called Positivism, which did much good and\nmuch ill. And among other ills that it wrought was the introduction of a\nmethod of analysis whereby facts were pulverized, reduced to a dust of\nfacts. Most of the facts labelled as such by Positivism were really only\nfragments of facts. In psychology its action was harmful. There were\neven scholastics meddling in literature--I will not say philosophers\nmeddling in poetry, because poet and philosopher are twin brothers, if\nnot even one and the same--who carried this Positivist psychological\nanalysis into the novel and the drama, where the main business is to\ngive act and motion to concrete men, men of flesh and bone, and by dint\nof studying states of consciousness, consciousness itself disappeared.\nThe same thing happened to them which is said often to happen in the\nexamination and testing of certain complicated, organic, living chemical\ncompounds, when the reagents destroy the very body which it was proposed\nto examine and all that is obtained is the products of its\ndecomposition.\n\nTaking as their starting-point the evident fact that contradictory\nstates pass through our consciousness, they did not succeed in\nenvisaging consciousness itself, the \"I.\" To ask a man about his \"I\" is\nlike asking him about his body. And note that in speaking of the \"I,\" I\nspeak of the concrete and personal \"I,\" not of the \"I\" of Fichte, but of\nFichte himself, the man Fichte.\n\nThat which determines a man, that which makes him one man, one and not\nanother, the man he is and not the man he is not, is a principle of\nunity and a principle of continuity. A principle of unity firstly in\nspace, thanks to the body, and next in action and intention. When we\nwalk, one foot does not go forward and the other backward, nor, when we\nlook, if we are normal, does one eye look towards the north and the\nother towards the south. In each moment of our life we entertain some\npurpose, and to this purpose the synergy of our actions is directed.\nNotwithstanding the next moment we may change our purpose. And in a\ncertain sense a man is so much the more a man the more unitary his\naction. Some there are who throughout their whole life follow but one\nsingle purpose, be it what it may.\n\nAlso a principle of continuity in time. Without entering upon a\ndiscussion--an unprofitable discussion--as to whether I am or am not he\nwho I was twenty years ago, it appears to me to be indisputable that he\nwho I am to-day derives, by a continuous series of states of\nconsciousness, from him who was in my body twenty years ago. Memory is\nthe basis of individual personality, just as tradition is the basis of\nthe collective personality of a people. We live in memory and by\nmemory, and our spiritual life is at bottom simply the effort of our\nmemory to persist, to transform itself into hope, the effort of our past\nto transform itself into our future.\n\nAll this, I know well, is sheer platitude; but in going about in the\nworld one meets men who seem to have no feeling of their own\npersonality. One of my best friends with whom I have walked and talked\nevery day for many years, whenever I spoke to him of this sense of one's\nown personality, used to say: \"But I have no sense of myself; I don't\nknow what that is.\"\n\nOn a certain occasion this friend remarked to me: \"I should like to be\nSo-and-so\" (naming someone), and I said: \"That is what I shall never be\nable to understand--that one should want to be someone else. (To want to\nbe someone else is to want to cease to be he who one is.) I understand\nthat one should wish to have what someone else has, his wealth or his\nknowledge; but to be someone else, that is a thing I cannot comprehend.\"\nIt has often been said that every man who has suffered misfortunes\nprefers to be himself, even with his misfortunes, rather than to be\nsomeone else without them. For unfortunate men, when they preserve their\nnormality in their misfortune--that is to say, when they endeavour to\npersist in their own being--prefer misfortune to non-existence. For\nmyself I can say that as a youth, and even as a child, I remained\nunmoved when shown the most moving pictures of hell, for even then\nnothing appeared to me quite so horrible as nothingness itself. It was a\nfurious hunger of being that possessed me, an appetite for divinity, as\none of our ascetics has put it.[7]\n\nTo propose to a man that he should be someone else, that he should\nbecome someone else, is to propose to him that he should cease to be\nhimself. Everyone defends his own personality, and only consents to a\nchange in his mode of thinking or of feeling in so far as this change is\nable to enter into the unity of his spirit and become involved in its\ncontinuity; in so far as this change can harmonize and integrate itself\nwith all the rest of his mode of being, thinking and feeling, and can at\nthe same time knit itself with his memories. Neither of a man nor of a\npeople--which is, in a certain sense, also a man--can a change be\ndemanded which breaks the unity and continuity of the person. A man can\nchange greatly, almost completely even, but the change must take place\nwithin his continuity.\n\nIt is true that in certain individuals there occur what are called\nchanges of personality; but these are pathological cases, and as such\nare studied by alienists. In these changes of personality, memory, the\nbasis of consciousness, is completely destroyed, and all that is left to\nthe sufferer as the substratum of his individual continuity, which has\nnow ceased to be personal, is the physical organism. For the subject who\nsuffers it, such an infirmity is equivalent to death--it is not\nequivalent to death only for those who expect to inherit his fortune, if\nhe possesses one! And this infirmity is nothing less than a revolution,\na veritable revolution.\n\nA disease is, in a certain sense, an organic dissociation; it is a\nrebellion of some element or organ of the living body which breaks the\nvital synergy and seeks an end distinct from that which the other\nelements co-ordinated with it seek. Its end, considered in itself--that\nis to say, in the abstract--may be more elevated, more noble, more\nanything you like; but it is different. To fly and breathe in the air\nmay be better than to swim and breathe in the water; but if the fins of\na fish aimed at converting themselves into wings, the fish, as a fish,\nwould perish. And it is useless to say that it would end by becoming a\nbird, if in this becoming there was not a process of continuity. I do\nnot precisely know, but perhaps it may be possible for a fish to\nengender a bird, or another fish more akin to a bird than itself; but a\nfish, this fish, cannot itself and during its own lifetime become a\nbird.\n\nEverything in me that conspires to break the unity and continuity of my\nlife conspires to destroy me and consequently to destroy itself. Every\nindividual in a people who conspires to break the spiritual unity and\ncontinuity of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself as\na part of that people. What if some other people is better than our own?\nVery possibly, although perhaps we do not clearly understand what is\nmeant by better or worse. Richer? Granted. More cultured? Granted\nlikewise. Happier? Well, happiness ... but still, let it pass! A\nconquering people (or what is called conquering) while we are conquered?\nWell and good. All this is good--but it is something different. And that\nis enough. Because for me the becoming other than I am, the breaking of\nthe unity and continuity of my life, is to cease to be he who I am--that\nis to say, it is simply to cease to be. And that--no! Anything rather\nthan that!\n\nAnother, you say, might play the part that I play as well or better?\nAnother might fulfil my function in society? Yes, but it would not be I.\n\n\"I, I, I, always I!\" some reader will exclaim; \"and who are you?\" I\nmight reply in the words of Obermann, that tremendous man Obermann: \"For\nthe universe, nothing--for myself, everything\"; but no, I would rather\nremind him of a doctrine of the man Kant--to wit, that we ought to think\nof our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does not\ntouch me alone, it touches you also, grumbling reader, it touches each\nand all. Singular judgments have the value of universal judgments, the\nlogicians say. The singular is not particular, it is universal.\n\nMan is an end, not a means. All civilization addresses itself to man, to\neach man, to each I. What is that idol, call it Humanity or call it what\nyou like, to which all men and each individual man must be sacrificed?\nFor I sacrifice myself for my neighbours, for my fellow-countrymen, for\nmy children, and these sacrifice themselves in their turn for theirs,\nand theirs again for those that come after them, and so on in a\nnever-ending series of generations. And who receives the fruit of this\nsacrifice?\n\nThose who talk to us about this fantastic sacrifice, this dedication\nwithout an object, are wont to talk to us also about the right to live.\nWhat is this right to live? They tell me I am here to realize I know not\nwhat social end; but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am here\nto realize myself, to live.\n\nYes, yes, I see it all!--an enormous social activity, a mighty\ncivilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of\nmorality, and afterwards, when we have filled the world with industrial\nmarvels, with great factories, with roads, museums, and libraries, we\nshall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist--for\nwhom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?\n\n\"Why!\" the reader will exclaim again, \"we are coming back to what the\nCatechism says: '_Q_. For whom did God create the world? _A_. For man.'\"\nWell, why not?--so ought the man who is a man to reply. The ant, if it\ntook account of these matters and were a person, would reply \"For the\nant,\" and it would reply rightly. The world is made for consciousness,\nfor each consciousness.\n\nA human soul is worth all the universe, someone--I know not whom--has\nsaid and said magnificently. A human soul, mind you! Not a human life.\nNot this life. And it happens that the less a man believes in the\nsoul--that is to say in his conscious immortality, personal and\nconcrete--the more he will exaggerate the worth of this poor transitory\nlife. This is the source from which springs all that effeminate,\nsentimental ebullition against war. True, a man ought not to wish to\ndie, but the death to be renounced is the death of the soul. \"Whosoever\nwill save his life shall lose it,\" says the Gospel; but it does not say\n\"whosoever will save his soul,\" the immortal soul--or, at any rate,\nwhich we believe and wish to be immortal.\n\nAnd what all the objectivists do not see, or rather do not wish to see,\nis that when a man affirms his \"I,\" his personal consciousness, he\naffirms man, man concrete and real, affirms the true humanism--the\nhumanism of man, not of the things of man--and in affirming man he\naffirms consciousness. For the only consciousness of which we have\nconsciousness is that of man.\n\nThe world is for consciousness. Or rather this _for_, this notion of\nfinality, and feeling rather than notion, this teleological feeling, is\nborn only where there is consciousness. Consciousness and finality are\nfundamentally the same thing.\n\nIf the sun possessed consciousness it would think, no doubt, that it\nlived in order to give light to the worlds; but it would also and above\nall think that the worlds existed in order that it might give them light\nand enjoy itself in giving them light and so live. And it would think\nwell.\n\nAnd all this tragic fight of man to save himself, this immortal craving\nfor immortality which caused the man Kant to make that immortal leap of\nwhich I have spoken, all this is simply a fight for consciousness. If\nconsciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a\nflash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing\nmore execrable than existence.\n\nSome may espy a fundamental contradiction in everything that I am\nsaying, now expressing a longing for unending life, now affirming that\nthis earthly life does not possess the value that is given to it.\nContradiction? To be sure! The contradiction of my heart that says Yes\nand of my head that says No! Of course there is contradiction. Who does\nnot recollect those words of the Gospel, \"Lord, I believe, help thou my\nunbelief\"? Contradiction! Of course! Since we only live in and by\ncontradictions, since life is tragedy and the tragedy is perpetual\nstruggle, without victory or the hope of victory, life is contradiction.\n\nThe values we are discussing are, as you see, values of the heart, and\nagainst values of the heart reasons do not avail. For reasons are only\nreasons--that is to say, they are not even truths. There is a class of\npedantic label-mongers, pedants by nature and by grace, who remind me of\nthat man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly died\nin the flower of his years, says to him, \"Patience, my friend, we all\nmust die!\" Would you think it strange if this father were offended at\nsuch an impertinence? For it is an impertinence. There are times when\neven an axiom can become an impertinence. How many times may it not be\nsaid--\n\n    _Para pensar cual t\u00fa, s\u00f3lo es preciso\n    no tener nada mas que inteligencia_.[8]\n\nThere are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, or\nwith whatever may be the specific thinking organ; while others think\nwith all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow of\nthe bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the\nlife. And the people who think only with the brain develop into\ndefinition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought. And you\nknow what a professional is? You know what a product of the\ndifferentiation of labour is?\n\nTake a professional boxer. He has learnt to hit with such economy of\neffort that, while concentrating all his strength in the blow, he only\nbrings into play just those muscles that are required for the immediate\nand definite object of his action--to knock out his opponent. A blow\ngiven by a non-professional will not have so much immediate, objective\nefficiency; but it will more greatly vitalize the striker, causing him\nto bring into play almost the whole of his body. The one is the blow of\na boxer, the other that of a man. And it is notorious that the Hercules\nof the circus, the athletes of the ring, are not, as a rule, healthy.\nThey knock out their opponents, they lift enormous weights, but they die\nof phthisis or dyspepsia.\n\nIf a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is\nabove all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man. The\ncultivation of any branch of science--of chemistry, of physics, of\ngeometry, of philology--may be a work of differentiated specialization,\nand even so only within very narrow limits and restrictions; but\nphilosophy, like poetry, is a work of integration and synthesis, or else\nit is merely pseudo-philosophical erudition.\n\nAll knowledge has an ultimate object. Knowledge for the sake of\nknowledge is, say what you will, nothing but a dismal begging of the\nquestion. We learn something either for an immediate practical end, or\nin order to complete the rest of our knowledge. Even the knowledge that\nappears to us to be most theoretical--that is to say, of least immediate\napplication to the non-intellectual necessities of life--answers to a\nnecessity which is no less real because it is intellectual, to a reason\nof economy in thinking, to a principle of unity and continuity of\nconsciousness. But just as a scientific fact has its finality in the\nrest of knowledge, so the philosophy that we would make our own has also\nits extrinsic object--it refers to our whole destiny, to our attitude in\nface of life and the universe. And the most tragic problem of philosophy\nis to reconcile intellectual necessities with the necessities of the\nheart and the will. For it is on this rock that every philosophy that\npretends to resolve the eternal and tragic contradiction, the basis of\nour existence, breaks to pieces. But do all men face this contradiction\nsquarely?\n\nLittle can be hoped from a ruler, for example, who has not at some time\nor other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with the first\nbeginning and the ultimate end of all things, and above all of man, with\nthe \"why\" of his origin and the \"wherefore\" of his destiny.\n\nAnd this supreme preoccupation cannot be purely rational, it must\ninvolve the heart. It is not enough to think about our destiny: it must\nbe felt. And the would-be leader of men who affirms and proclaims that\nhe pays no heed to the things of the spirit, is not worthy to lead them.\nBy which I do not mean, of course, that any ready-made solution is to be\nrequired of him. Solution? Is there indeed any?\n\nSo far as I am concerned, I will never willingly yield myself, nor\nentrust my confidence, to any popular leader who is not penetrated with\nthe feeling that he who orders a people orders men, men of flesh and\nbone, men who are born, suffer, and, although they do not wish to die,\ndie; men who are ends in themselves, not merely means; men who must be\nthemselves and not others; men, in fine, who seek that which we call\nhappiness. It is inhuman, for example, to sacrifice one generation of\nmen to the generation which follows, without having any feeling for the\ndestiny of those who are sacrificed, without having any regard, not for\ntheir memory, not for their names, but for them themselves.\n\nAll this talk of a man surviving in his children, or in his works, or in\nthe universal consciousness, is but vague verbiage which satisfies only\nthose who suffer from affective stupidity, and who, for the rest, may be\npersons of a certain cerebral distinction. For it is possible to possess\ngreat talent, or what we call great talent, and yet to be stupid as\nregards the feelings and even morally imbecile. There have been\ninstances.\n\nThese clever-witted, affectively stupid persons are wont to say that it\nis useless to seek to delve in the unknowable or to kick against the\npricks. It is as if one should say to a man whose leg has had to be\namputated that it does not help him at all to think about it. And we all\nlack something; only some of us feel the lack and others do not. Or they\npretend not to feel the lack, and then they are hypocrites.\n\nA pedant who beheld Solon weeping for the death of a son said to him,\n\"Why do you weep thus, if weeping avails nothing?\" And the sage answered\nhim, \"Precisely for that reason--because it does not avail.\" It is\nmanifest that weeping avails something, even if only the alleviation of\ndistress; but the deep sense of Solon's reply to the impertinent\nquestioner is plainly seen. And I am convinced that we should solve many\nthings if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs,\nwhich perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joined\ntogether in beweeping them and crying aloud to the heavens and calling\nupon God. And this, even though God should hear us not; but He would\nhear us. The chiefest sanctity of a temple is that it is a place to\nwhich men go to weep in common. A _miserere_ sung in common by a\nmultitude tormented by destiny has as much value as a philosophy. It is\nnot enough to cure the plague: we must learn to weep for it. Yes, we\nmust learn to weep! Perhaps that is the supreme wisdom. Why? Ask Solon.\n\nThere is something which, for lack of a better name, we will call the\ntragic sense of life, which carries with it a whole conception of life\nitself and of the universe, a whole philosophy more or less formulated,\nmore or less conscious. And this sense may be possessed, and is\npossessed, not only by individual men but by whole peoples. And this\nsense does not so much flow from ideas as determine them, even though\nafterwards, as is manifest, these ideas react upon it and confirm it.\nSometimes it may originate in a chance illness--dyspepsia, for example;\nbut at other times it is constitutional. And it is useless to speak, as\nwe shall see, of men who are healthy and men who are not healthy. Apart\nfrom the fact there is no normal standard of health, nobody has proved\nthat man is necessarily cheerful by nature. And further, man, by the\nvery fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison\nwith the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease.\n\nAmong men of flesh and bone there have been typical examples of those\nwho possess this tragic sense of life. I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St.\nAugustine, Pascal, Rousseau, _Ren\u00e9, Obermann_, Thomson,[9] Leopardi,\nVigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard--men burdened with\nwisdom rather than with knowledge.\n\nAnd there are, I believe, peoples who possess this tragic sense of life\nalso.\n\nIt is to this that we must now turn our attention, beginning with this\nmatter of health and disease.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[5] \"_Salto inmortal_.\" There is a play here upon the term _salto\nmortal_, used to denote the dangerous aerial somersault of the acrobat,\nwhich cannot be rendered in English.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[6] \"_Conciencia_.\" The same word is used in Spanish to denote both\nconsciousness and conscience. If the latter is specifically intended,\nthe qualifying adjective \"_moral_\" or \"_religiosa_\" is commonly\nadded.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[7] San Juan de los Angeles.\n\n[8] To be lacking in everything but intelligence is the necessary\nqualification for thinking like you.\n\n[9] James Thomson, author of _The City of Dreadful Night_.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nTHE STARTING-POINT\n\n\nTo some, perhaps, the foregoing reflections may seem to possess a\ncertain morbid character. Morbid? But what is disease precisely? And\nwhat is health?\n\nMay not disease itself possibly be the essential condition of that which\nwe call progress and progress itself a disease?\n\nWho does not know the mythical tragedy of Paradise? Therein dwelt our\nfirst parents in a state of perfect health and perfect innocence, and\nJahw\u00e9 gave them to eat of the tree of life and created all things for\nthem; but he commanded them not to taste of the fruit of the tree of the\nknowledge of good and evil. But they, tempted by the serpent--Christ's\ntype of prudence--tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of\ngood and evil, and became subject to all diseases, and to death, which\nis their crown and consummation, and to labour and to progress. For\nprogress, according to this legend, springs from original sin. And thus\nit was the curiosity of Eve, of woman, of her who is most thrall to the\norganic necessities of life and of the conservation of life, that\noccasioned the Fall and with the Fall the Redemption, and it was the\nRedemption that set our feet on the way to God and made it possible for\nus to attain to Him and to be in Him.\n\nDo you want another version of our origin? Very well then. According to\nthis account, man is, strictly speaking, merely a species of gorilla,\norang-outang, chimpanzee, or the like, more or less hydrocephalous. Once\non a time an anthropoid monkey had a diseased offspring--diseased from\nthe strictly animal or zoological point of view, really diseased; and\nthis disease, although a source of weakness, resulted in a positive gain\nin the struggle for survival. The only vertical mammal at last succeeded\nin standing erect--man. The upright position freed him from the\nnecessity of using his hands as means of support in walking; he was\nable, therefore, to oppose the thumb to the other four fingers, to seize\nhold of objects and to fashion tools; and it is well known that the\nhands are great promoters of the intelligence. This same position gave\nto the lungs, trachea, larynx, and mouth an aptness for the production\nof articulate speech, and speech is intelligence. Moreover, this\nposition, causing the head to weigh vertically upon the trunk,\nfacilitated its development and increase of weight, and the head is the\nseat of the mind. But as this necessitated greater strength and\nresistance in the bones of the pelvis than in those of species whose\nhead and trunk rest upon all four extremities, the burden fell upon\nwoman, the author of the Fall according to Genesis, of bringing forth\nlarger-headed offspring through a harder framework of bone. And Jahw\u00e9\ncondemned her, for having sinned, to bring forth her children in sorrow.\n\nThe gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang, and their kind, must look\nupon man as a feeble and infirm animal, whose strange custom it is to\nstore up his dead. Wherefore?\n\nAnd this primary disease and all subsequent diseases--are they not\nperhaps the capital element of progress? Arthritis, for example, infects\nthe blood and introduces into it scori\u00e6, a kind of refuse, of an\nimperfect organic combustion; but may not this very impurity happen to\nmake the blood more stimulative? May not this impure blood promote a\nmore active cerebration precisely because it is impure? Water that is\nchemically pure is undrinkable. And may not also blood that is\nphysiologically pure be unfit for the brain of the vertical mammal that\nhas to live by thought?\n\nThe history of medicine, moreover, teaches us that progress consists\nnot so much in expelling the germs of disease, or rather diseases\nthemselves, as in accommodating them to our organism and so perhaps\nenriching it, in dissolving them in our blood. What but this is the\nmeaning of vaccination and all the serums, and immunity from infection\nthrough lapse of time?\n\nIf this notion of absolute health were not an abstract category,\nsomething which does not strictly exist, we might say that a perfectly\nhealthy man would be no longer a man, but an irrational animal.\nIrrational, because of the lack of some disease to set a spark to his\nreason. And this disease which gives us the appetite of knowing for the\nsole pleasure of knowing, for the delight of tasting of the fruit of the\ntree of the knowledge of good and evil, is a real disease and a tragic\none.\n\n_Pantes anthr\u00f4poi ton eidenai oregontai phusei_, \"all men\nnaturally desire to know.\" Thus Aristotle begins his Metaphysic, and it\nhas been repeated a thousand times since then that curiosity or the\ndesire to know, which according to Genesis led our first mother to sin,\nis the origin of knowledge.\n\nBut it is necessary to distinguish here between the desire or appetite\nfor knowing, apparently and at first sight for the love of knowledge\nitself, between the eagerness to taste of the fruit of the tree of\nknowledge, and the necessity of knowing for the sake of living. The\nlatter, which gives us direct and immediate knowledge, and which in a\ncertain sense might be called, if it does not seem too paradoxical,\nunconscious knowledge, is common both to men and animals, while that\nwhich distinguishes us from them is reflective knowledge, the knowing\nthat we know.\n\nMan has debated at length and will continue to debate at length--the\nworld having been assigned as a theatre for his debates--concerning the\norigin of knowledge; but, apart from the question as to what the real\ntruth about this origin may be, which we will leave until later, it is\na certainly ascertained fact that in the apparential order of things, in\nthe life of beings who are endowed with a certain more or less cloudy\nfaculty of knowing and perceiving, or who at any rate appear to act as\nif they were so endowed, knowledge is exhibited to us as bound up with\nthe necessity of living and of procuring the wherewithal to maintain\nlife. It is a consequence of that very essence of being, which according\nto Spinoza consists in the effort to persist indefinitely in its own\nbeing. Speaking in terms in which concreteness verges upon grossness, it\nmay be said that the brain, in so far as its function is concerned,\ndepends upon the stomach. In beings which rank in the lowest scale of\nlife, those actions which present the characteristics of will, those\nwhich appear to be connected with a more or less clear consciousness,\nare actions designed to procure nourishment for the being performing\nthem.\n\nSuch then is what we may call the historical origin of knowledge,\nwhatever may be its origin from another point of view. Beings which\nappear to be endowed with perception, perceive in order to be able to\nlive, and only perceive in so far as they require to do so in order to\nlive. But perhaps this stored-up knowledge, the utility in which it had\nits origin being exhausted, has come to constitute a fund of knowledge\nfar exceeding that required for the bare necessities of living.\n\nThus we have, first, the necessity of knowing in order to live, and\nnext, arising out of this, that other knowledge which we might call\nsuperfluous knowledge or knowledge _de luxe_, which may in its turn come\nto constitute a new necessity. Curiosity, the so-called innate desire of\nknowing, only awakes and becomes operative after the necessity of\nknowing for the sake of living is satisfied; and although sometimes in\nthe conditions under which the human race is actually living it may not\nso befall, but curiosity may prevail over necessity and knowledge over\nhunger, nevertheless the primordial fact is that curiosity sprang from\nthe necessity of knowing in order to live, and this is the dead weight\nand gross matter carried in the matrix of science. Aspiring to be\nknowledge for the sake of knowledge, to know the truth for the sake of\nthe truth itself, science is forced by the necessities of life to turn\naside and put it itself at their service. While men believe themselves\nto be seeking truth for its own sake, they are in fact seeking life in\ntruth. The variations of science depend upon the variations of human\nneeds, and men of science are wont to work, willingly or unwillingly,\nwittingly or unwittingly, in the service of the powerful or in that of a\npeople that demands from them the confirmation of its own desires.\n\nBut is this really a dead weight that impedes the progress of science,\nor is it not rather its innermost redeeming essence? It is in fact the\nlatter, and it is a gross stupidity to presume to rebel against the very\ncondition of life.\n\nKnowledge is employed in the service of the necessity of life and\nprimarily in the service of the instinct of personal preservation. This\nnecessity and this instinct have created in man the organs of knowledge\nand given them such capacity as they possess. Man sees, hears, touches,\ntastes, and smells that which it is necessary for him to see, hear,\ntouch, taste, and smell in order to preserve his life. The decay or the\nloss of any of these senses increases the risks with which his life is\nenvironed, and if it increases them less in the state of society in\nwhich we are actually living, the reason is that some see, hear, touch,\nand smell for others. A blind man, by himself and without a guide, could\nnot live long. Society is an additional sense; it is the true common\nsense.\n\nMan, then, in his quality of an isolated individual, only sees, hears,\ntouches, tastes, and smells in so far as is necessary for living and\nself-preservation. If he does not perceive colours below red or above\nviolet, the reason perhaps is that the colours which he does perceive\nsuffice for the purposes of self-preservation. And the senses themselves\nare simplifying apparati which eliminate from objective reality\neverything that it is not necessary to know in order to utilize objects\nfor the purpose of preserving life. In complete darkness an animal, if\nit does not perish, ends by becoming blind. Parasites which live in the\nintestines of other animals upon the nutritive juices which they find\nready prepared for them by these animals, as they do not need either to\nsee or hear, do in fact neither see nor hear; they simply adhere, a kind\nof receptive bag, to the being upon whom they live. For these parasites\nthe visible and audible world does not exist. It is enough for them that\nthe animals, in whose intestines they live, see and hear.\n\nKnowledge, then, is primarily at the service of the instinct of\nself-preservation, which is indeed, as we have said with Spinoza, its\nvery essence. And thus it may be said that it is the instinct of\nself-preservation that makes perceptible for us the reality and truth of\nthe world; for it is this instinct that cuts out and separates that\nwhich exists for us from the unfathomable and illimitable region of the\npossible. In effect, that which has existence for us is precisely that\nwhich, in one way or another, we need to know in order to exist\nourselves; objective existence, as we know it, is a dependence of our\nown personal existence. And nobody can deny that there may not exist,\nand perhaps do exist, aspects of reality unknown to us, to-day at any\nrate, and perhaps unknowable, because they are in no way necessary to us\nfor the preservation of our own actual existence.\n\nBut man does not live alone; he is not an isolated individual, but a\nmember of society. There is not a little truth in the saying that the\nindividual, like the atom, is an abstraction. Yes, the atom apart from\nthe universe is as much an abstraction as the universe apart from the\natom. And if the individual maintains his existence by the instinct of\nself-preservation, society owes its being and maintenance to the\nindividual's instinct of perpetuation. And from this instinct, or rather\nfrom society, springs reason.\n\nReason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, the\ndistinguishing mark of man, is a social product.\n\nIt owes its origin, perhaps, to language. We think articulately--_i.e._,\nreflectively--thanks to articulate language, and this language arose out\nof the need of communicating our thought to our neighbours. To think is\nto talk with oneself, and each one of us talks with himself, thanks to\nour having had to talk with one another. In everyday life it frequently\nhappens that we hit upon an idea that we were seeking and succeed in\ngiving it form--that is to say, we obtain the idea, drawing it forth\nfrom the mist of dim perceptions which it represents, thanks to the\nefforts which we make to present it to others. Thought is inward\nlanguage, and the inward language originates in the outward. Hence it\nresults that reason is social and common. A fact pregnant with\nconsequences, as we shall have occasion to see.\n\nNow if there is a reality which, in so far as we have knowledge of it,\nis the creation of the instinct of personal preservation and of the\nsenses at the service of this instinct, must there not be another\nreality, not less real than the former, the creation, in so far as we\nhave knowledge of it, of the instinct of perpetuation, the instinct of\nthe species, and of the senses at the service of this instinct? The\ninstinct of preservation, hunger, is the foundation of the human\nindividual; the instinct of perpetuation, love, in its most rudimentary\nand physiological form, is the foundation of human society. And just as\nman knows that which he needs to know in order that he may preserve his\nexistence, so society, or man in so far as he is a social being, knows\nthat which he needs to know in order that he may perpetuate himself in\nsociety.\n\nThere is a world, the sensible world, that is the child of hunger, and\nthere is another world, the ideal world, that is the child of love. And\njust as there are senses employed in the service of the knowledge of the\nsensible world, so there are also senses, at present for the most part\ndormant, for social consciousness has scarcely awakened, employed in the\nservice of the knowledge of the ideal world. And why must we deny\nobjective reality to the creations of love, of the instinct of\nperpetuation, since we allow it to the creations of hunger or the\ninstinct of preservation? For if it be said that the former creations\nare only the creations of our imagination, without objective value, may\nit not equally be said of the latter that they are only the creations of\nour senses? Who can assert that there is not an invisible and intangible\nworld, perceived by the inward sense that lives in the service of the\ninstinct of perpetuation?\n\nHuman society, as a society, possesses senses which the individual, but\nfor his existence in society, would lack, just as the individual, man,\nwho is in his turn a kind of society, possesses senses lacking in the\ncells of which he is composed. The blind cells of hearing, in their dim\nconsciousness, must of necessity be unaware of the existence of the\nvisible world, and if they should hear it spoken of they would perhaps\ndeem it to be the arbitrary creation of the deaf cells of sight, while\nthe latter in their turn would consider as illusion the audible world\nwhich the hearing cells create.\n\nWe have remarked before that the parasites which live in the intestines\nof higher animals, feeding upon the nutritive juices which these animals\nsupply, do not need either to see or hear, and therefore for them the\nvisible and audible world does not exist. And if they possessed a\ncertain degree of consciousness and took account of the fact that the\nanimal at whose expense they live believed in a world of sight and\nhearing, they would perhaps deem such belief to be due merely to the\nextravagance of its imagination. And similarly there are social\nparasites, as Mr. A.J. Balfour admirably observes,[10] who, receiving\nfrom the society in which they live the motives of their moral conduct,\ndeny that belief in God and the other life is a necessary foundation for\ngood conduct and for a tolerable life, society having prepared for them\nthe spiritual nutriment by which they live. An isolated individual can\nendure life and live it well and even heroically without in any sort\nbelieving either in the immortality of the soul or in God, but he lives\nthe life of a spiritual parasite. What we call the sense of honour is,\neven in non-Christians, a Christian product. And I will say further,\nthat if there exists in a man faith in God joined to a life of purity\nand moral elevation, it is not so much the believing in God that makes\nhim good, as the being good, thanks to God, that makes him believe in\nHim. Goodness is the best source of spiritual clear-sightedness.\n\nI am well aware that it may be objected that all this talk of man\ncreating the sensible world and love the ideal world, of the blind cells\nof hearing and the deaf cells of sight, of spiritual parasites, etc., is\nmerely metaphor. So it is, and I do not claim to discuss otherwise than\nby metaphor. And it is true that this social sense, the creature of\nlove, the creator of language, of reason, and of the ideal world that\nsprings from it, is at bottom nothing other than what we call fancy or\nimagination. Out of fancy springs reason. And if by imagination is\nunderstood a faculty which fashions images capriciously, I will ask:\nWhat is caprice? And in any case the senses and reason are also\nfallible.\n\nWe shall have to enquire what is this inner social faculty, the\nimagination which personalizes everything, and which, employed in the\nservice of the instinct of perpetuation, reveals to us God and the\nimmortality of the soul--God being thus a social product.\n\nBut this we will reserve till later.\n\nAnd now, why does man philosophize?--that is to say, why does he\ninvestigate the first causes and ultimate ends of things? Why does he\nseek the disinterested truth? For to say that all men have a natural\ntendency to know is true; but wherefore?\n\nPhilosophers seek a theoretic or ideal starting-point for their human\nwork, the work of philosophizing; but they are not usually concerned to\nseek the practical and real starting-point, the purpose. What is the\nobject in making philosophy, in thinking it and then expounding it to\none's fellows? What does the philosopher seek in it and with it? The\ntruth for the truth's own sake? The truth, in order that we may subject\nour conduct to it and determine our spiritual attitude towards life and\nthe universe comformably with it?\n\nPhilosophy is a product of the humanity of each philosopher, and each\nphilosopher is a man of flesh and bone who addresses himself to other\nmen of flesh and bone like himself. And, let him do what he will, he\nphilosophizes not with the reason only, but with the will, with the\nfeelings, with the flesh and with the bones, with the whole soul and the\nwhole body. It is the man that philosophizes.\n\nI do not wish here to use the word \"I\" in connection with\nphilosophizing, lest the impersonal \"I\" should be understood in place of\nthe man that philosophizes; for this concrete, circumscribed \"I,\" this\n\"I\" of flesh and bone, that suffers from tooth-ache and finds life\ninsupportable if death is the annihilation of the personal\nconsciousness, must not be confounded with that other counterfeit \"I,\"\nthe theoretical \"I\" which Fichte smuggled into philosophy, nor yet with\nthe Unique, also theoretical, of Max Stirner. It is better to say \"we,\"\nunderstanding, however, the \"we\" who are circumscribed in space.\n\nKnowledge for the sake of knowledge! Truth for truth's sake! This is\ninhuman. And if we say that theoretical philosophy addresses itself to\npractical philosophy, truth to goodness, science to ethics, I will ask:\nAnd to what end is goodness? Is it, perhaps, an end in itself? Good is\nsimply that which contributes to the preservation, perpetuation, and\nenrichment of consciousness. Goodness addresses itself to man, to the\nmaintenance and perfection of human society which is composed of men.\nAnd to what end is this? \"So act that your action may be a pattern to\nall men,\" Kant tells us. That is well, but wherefore? We must needs seek\nfor a wherefore.\n\nIn the starting-point of all philosophy, in the real starting-point, the\npractical not the theoretical, there is a wherefore. The philosopher\nphilosophizes for something more than for the sake of philosophizing.\n_Primum vivere, deinde philosophari_, says the old Latin adage; and as\nthe philosopher is a man before he is a philosopher, he must needs live\nbefore he can philosophize, and, in fact, he philosophizes in order to\nlive. And usually he philosophizes either in order to resign himself to\nlife, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget\nhis griefs, or for pastime and amusement. A good illustration of this\nlast case is to be found in that terrible Athenian ironist, Socrates, of\nwhom Xenophon relates in his _Memorabilia_ that he discovered to\nTheodata, the courtesan, the wiles that she ought to make use of in\norder to lure lovers to her house so aptly, that she begged him to act\nas her companion in the chase, _sunth\u00earat\u00eas_, her pimp, in a\nword. And philosophy is wont, in fact, not infrequently to convert\nitself into a kind of art of spiritual pimping. And sometimes into an\nopiate for lulling sorrows to sleep.\n\nI take at random a book of metaphysics, the first that comes to my hand,\n_Time and Space, a Metaphysical Essay_, by Shadworth H. Hodgson. I open\nit, and in the fifth paragraph of the first chapter of the first part I\nread:\n\n\"Metaphysics is, properly speaking, not a science but a philosophy--that\nis, it is a science whose end is in itself, in the gratification and\neducation of the minds which carry it on, not in external purpose, such\nas the founding of any art conducive to the welfare of life.\" Let us\nexamine this. We see that metaphysics is not, properly speaking, a\nscience--that is, it is a science whose end is in itself. And this\nscience, which, properly speaking, is not a science, has its end in\nitself, in the gratification and education of the minds that cultivate\nit. But what are we to understand? Is its end in itself or is it to\ngratify and educate the minds that cultivate it? Either the one or the\nother! Hodgson afterwards adds that the end of metaphysics is not any\nexternal purpose, such as that of founding an art conducive to the\nwelfare of life. But is not the gratification of the mind of him who\ncultivates philosophy part of the well-being of his life? Let the reader\nconsider this passage of the English metaphysician and tell me if it is\nnot a tissue of contradictions.\n\nSuch a contradiction is inevitable when an attempt is made to define\nhumanly this theory of science, of knowledge, whose end is in itself, of\nknowing for the sake of knowing, of attaining truth for the sake of\ntruth. Science exists only in personal consciousness and thanks to it;\nastronomy, mathematics, have no other reality than that which they\npossess as knowledge in the minds of those who study and cultivate them.\nAnd if some day all personal consciousness must come to an end on the\nearth; if some day the human spirit must return to the nothingness--that\nis to say, to the absolute unconsciousness--from whence it sprang; and\nif there shall no more be any spirit that can avail itself of all our\naccumulated knowledge--then to what end is this knowledge? For we must\nnot lose sight of the fact that the problem of the personal immortality\nof the soul involves the future of the whole human species.\n\nThis series of contradictions into which the Englishman falls in his\ndesire to explain the theory of a science whose end is in itself, is\neasily understood when it is remembered that it is an Englishman who\nspeaks, and that the Englishman is before everything else a man. Perhaps\na German specialist, a philosopher who had made philosophy his\nspeciality, who had first murdered his humanity and then buried it in\nhis philosophy, would be better able to explain this theory of a science\nwhose end is in itself and of knowledge for the sake of knowledge.\n\nTake the man Spinoza, that Portuguese Jew exiled in Holland; read his\n_Ethic_ as a despairing elegiac poem, which in fact it is, and tell me\nif you do not hear, beneath the disemburdened and seemingly serene\npropositions _more geometrico_, the lugubrious echo of the prophetic\npsalms. It is not the philosophy of resignation but of despair. And when\nhe wrote that the free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and\nthat his wisdom consists in meditating not on death but on life--homo\nliber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat et eius sapientia non\nmortis, sed vit\u00e6 meditatio est (_Ethic_, Part IV., Prop. LXVII.)--when\nhe wrote that, he felt, as we all feel, that we are slaves, and he did\nin fact think about death, and he wrote it in a vain endeavour to free\nhimself from this thought. Nor in writing Proposition XLII. of Part V.,\nthat \"happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself,\" did he\nfeel, one may be sure, what he wrote. For this is usually the reason why\nmen philosophize--in order to convince themselves, even though they fail\nin the attempt. And this desire of convincing oneself--that is to say,\nthis desire of doing violence to one's own human nature--is the real\nstarting-point of not a few philosophies.\n\nWhence do I come and whence comes the world in which and by which I\nlive? Whither do I go and whither goes everything that environs me? What\ndoes it all mean? Such are the questions that man asks as soon as he\nfrees himself from the brutalizing necessity of labouring for his\nmaterial sustenance. And if we look closely, we shall see that beneath\nthese questions lies the wish to know not so much the \"why\" as the\n\"wherefore,\" not the cause but the end. Cicero's definition of\nphilosophy is well known--\"the knowledge of things divine and human and\nof the causes in which these things are contained,\" _rerum divinarum et\nhumanarum, causarumque quibus h\u00e6 res continentur_; but in reality these\ncauses are, for us, ends. And what is the Supreme Cause, God, but the\nSupreme End? The \"why\" interests us only in view of the \"wherefore.\" We\nwish to know whence we came only in order the better to be able to\nascertain whither we are going.\n\nThis Ciceronian definition, which is the Stoic definition, is also found\nin that formidable intellectualist, Clement of Alexandria, who was\ncanonized by the Catholic Church, and he expounds it in the fifth\nchapter of the first of his _Stromata_. But this same Christian\nphilosopher--Christian?--in the twenty-second chapter of his fourth\n_Stroma_ tells us that for the gnostic--that is to say, the\nintellectual--knowledge, _gnosis_, ought to suffice, and he adds: \"I\nwill dare aver that it is not because he wishes to be saved that he, who\ndevotes himself to knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself,\nchooses knowledge. For the exertion of the intellect by exercise is\nprolonged to a perpetual exertion. And the perpetual exertion of the\nintellect is the essence of an intelligent being, which results from an\nuninterrupted process of admixture, and remains eternal contemplation, a\nliving substance. Could we, then, suppose anyone proposing to the\ngnostic whether he would choose the knowledge of God or everlasting\nsalvation, and if these, which are entirely identical, were separable,\nhe would without the least hesitation choose the knowledge of God?\" May\nHe, may God Himself, whom we long to enjoy and possess eternally,\ndeliver us from this Clementine gnosticism or intellectualism!\n\nWhy do I wish to know whence I come and whither I go, whence comes and\nwhither goes everything that environs me, and what is the meaning of it\nall? For I do not wish to die utterly, and I wish to know whether I am\nto die or not definitely. If I do not die, what is my destiny? and if I\ndie, then nothing has any meaning for me. And there are three solutions:\n(_a_) I know that I shall die utterly, and then irremediable despair, or\n(_b_) I know that I shall not die utterly, and then resignation, or\n(_c_) I cannot know either one or the other, and then resignation in\ndespair or despair in resignation, a desperate resignation or a resigned\ndespair, and hence conflict.\n\n\"It is best,\" some reader will say, \"not to concern yourself with what\ncannot be known.\" But is it possible? In his very beautiful poem, _The\nAncient Sage_, Tennyson said:\n\n    Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,\n    Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,\n    Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,\n    Thou canst not prove that thou art spirit alone,\n    Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:\n    Nor canst thou prove thou art immortal, no,\n    Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son,\n    Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,\n    Am not thyself in converse with thyself,\n    For nothing worthy proving can be proven,\n    Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,\n    Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,\n    Cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!\n\nYes, perhaps, as the Sage says, \"nothing worthy proving can be proven,\nnor yet disproven\"; but can we restrain that instinct which urges man to\nwish to know, and above all to wish to know the things which may conduce\nto life, to eternal life? Eternal life, not eternal knowledge, as the\nAlexandrian gnostic said. For living is one thing and knowing is\nanother; and, as we shall see, perhaps there is such an opposition\nbetween the two that we may say that everything vital is anti-rational,\nnot merely irrational, and that everything rational is anti-vital. And\nthis is the basis of the tragic sense of life.\n\nThe defect of Descartes' _Discourse of Method_ lies not in the\nantecedent methodical doubt; not in his beginning by resolving to doubt\neverything, a merely intellectual device; but in his resolution to begin\nby emptying himself of himself, of Descartes, of the real man, the man\nof flesh and bone, the man who does not want to die, in order that he\nmight be a mere thinker--that is, an abstraction. But the real man\nreturned and thrust himself into the philosophy.\n\n\"_Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partag\u00e9e_.\" Thus begins the\n_Discourse of Method_, and this good sense saved him. He continues\ntalking about himself, about the man Descartes, telling us among other\nthings that he greatly esteemed eloquence and loved poetry; that he\ndelighted above all in mathematics because of the evidence and certainty\nof its reasons, and that he revered our theology and claimed as much as\nany to attain to heaven--_et pr\u00e9tendais autant qu'aucun autre \u00e0 gagner\nle ciel_. And this pretension--a very laudable one, I think, and above\nall very natural--was what prevented him from deducing all the\nconsequences of his methodical doubt. The man Descartes claimed, as much\nas any other, to attain to heaven, \"but having learned as a thing very\nsure that the way to it is not less open to the most ignorant than to\nthe most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead thither are\nbeyond our intelligence, I did not dare submit them to my feeble\nreasonings, and I thought that to undertake to examine them and to\nsucceed therein, I should want some extraordinary help from heaven and\nneed to be more than man.\" And here we have the man. Here we have the\nman who \"did not feel obliged, thank God, to make a profession\n(_m\u00e9tier_) of science in order to increase his means, and who did not\npretend to play the cynic and despise glory.\" And afterwards he tells us\nhow he was compelled to make a sojourn in Germany, and there, shut up in\na stove (_po\u00eale_) he began to philosophize his method. But in Germany,\nshut up in a stove! And such his discourse is, a stove-discourse, and\nthe stove a German one, although the philosopher shut up in it was a\nFrenchman who proposed to himself to attain to heaven.\n\nAnd he arrives at the _cogito ergo sum_, which St. Augustine had already\nanticipated; but the _ego_ implicit in this enthymeme, _ego cogito, ergo\nego sum_, is an unreal--that is, an ideal--_ego_ or I, and its _sum_,\nits existence, something unreal also. \"I think, therefore I am,\" can\nonly mean \"I think, therefore I am a thinker\"; this being of the \"I am,\"\nwhich is deduced from \"I think,\" is merely a knowing; this being is\nknowledge, but not life. And the primary reality is not that I think,\nbut that I live, for those also live who do not think. Although this\nliving may not be a real living. God! what contradictions when we seek\nto join in wedlock life and reason!\n\nThe truth is _sum, ergo cogito_--I am, therefore I think, although not\neverything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all\nconsciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness\nof self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without\nfeeling, without that species of materiality which feeling lends to it?\nDo we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act\nof knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove have said: \"I\nfeel, therefore I am\"? or \"I will, therefore I am\"? And to feel oneself,\nis it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable? To will oneself, is it\nnot to wish oneself eternal--that is to say, not to wish to die? What\nthe sorrowful Jew of Amsterdam called the essence of the thing, the\neffort that it makes to persist indefinitely in its own being,\nself-love, the longing for immortality, is it not perhaps the primal and\nfundamental condition of all reflective or human knowledge? And is it\nnot therefore the true base, the real starting-point, of all philosophy,\nalthough the philosophers, perverted by intellectualism, may not\nrecognize it?\n\nAnd, moreover, it was the _cogito_ that introduced a distinction which,\nalthough fruitful of truths, has been fruitful also of confusions, and\nthis distinction is that between object, _cogito_, and subject, _sum_.\nThere is scarcely any distinction that does not also lead to confusion.\nBut we will return to this later.\n\nFor the present let us remain keenly suspecting that the longing not to\ndie, the hunger for personal immortality, the effort whereby we tend to\npersist indefinitely in our own being, which is, according to the tragic\nJew, our very essence, that this is the affective basis of all knowledge\nand the personal inward starting-point of all human philosophy, wrought\nby a man and for men. And we shall see how the solution of this inward\naffective problem, a solution which may be but the despairing\nrenunciation of the attempt at a solution, is that which colours all the\nrest of philosophy. Underlying even the so-called problem of knowledge\nthere is simply this human feeling, just as underlying the enquiry into\nthe \"why,\" the cause, there is simply the search for the \"wherefore,\"\nthe end. All the rest is either to deceive oneself or to wish to deceive\nothers; and to wish to deceive others in order to deceive oneself.\n\nAnd this personal and affective starting-point of all philosophy and all\nreligion is the tragic sense of life. Let us now proceed to consider\nthis.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[10] _The Foundations of Belief, being Notes Introductory to the Study\nof Theology_, by the Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour London, 1895: \"So\nit is with those persons who claim to show by their example that\nnaturalism is practically consistent with the maintenance of ethical\nideals with which naturalism has no natural affinity. Their spiritual\nlife is parasitic: it is sheltered by convictions which belong, not to\nthem, but to the society of which they form a part; it is nourished by\nprocesses in which they take no share. And when those convictions decay,\nand those processes come to an end, the alien life which they have\nmaintained can scarce be expected to outlast them\" (Chap. iv.).\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY\n\n\nLet us pause to consider this immortal yearning for immortality--even\nthough the gnostics or intellectuals may be able to say that what\nfollows is not philosophy but rhetoric. Moreover, the divine Plato, when\nhe discussed the immortality of the soul in his _Ph\u00e6do_, said that it\nwas proper to clothe it in legend, _muthologein_.\n\nFirst of all let us recall once again--and it will not be for the last\ntime--that saying of Spinoza that every being endeavours to persist in\nitself, and that this endeavour is its actual essence, and implies\nindefinite time, and that the soul, in fine, sometimes with a clear and\ndistinct idea, sometimes confusedly, tends to persist in its being with\nindefinite duration, and is aware of its persistency (_Ethic_, Part\nIII., Props. VI.-X.).\n\nIt is impossible for us, in effect, to conceive of ourselves as not\nexisting, and no effort is capable of enabling consciousness to realize\nabsolute unconsciousness, its own annihilation. Try, reader, to imagine\nto yourself, when you are wide awake, the condition of your soul when\nyou are in a deep sleep; try to fill your consciousness with the\nrepresentation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility\nof it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness.\nWe cannot conceive ourselves as not existing.\n\nThe visible universe, the universe that is created by the instinct of\nself-preservation, becomes all too narrow for me. It is like a cramped\ncell, against the bars of which my soul beats its wings in vain. Its\nlack of air stifles me. More, more, and always more! I want to be\nmyself, and yet without ceasing to be myself to be others as well, to\nmerge myself into the totality of things visible and invisible, to\nextend myself into the illimitable of space and to prolong myself into\nthe infinite of time. Not to be all and for ever is as if not to be--at\nleast, let me be my whole self, and be so for ever and ever. And to be\nthe whole of myself is to be everybody else. Either all or nothing!\n\nAll or nothing! And what other meaning can the Shakespearean \"To be or\nnot to be\" have, or that passage in _Coriolanus_ where it is said of\nMarcius \"He wants nothing of a god but eternity\"? Eternity,\neternity!--that is the supreme desire! The thirst of eternity is what is\ncalled love among men, and whosoever loves another wishes to eternalize\nhimself in him. Nothing is real that is not eternal.\n\nFrom the poets of all ages and from the depths of their souls this\ntremendous vision of the flowing away of life like water has wrung\nbitter cries--from Pindar's \"dream of a shadow,\" _skias onar_, to\nCalder\u00f3n's \"life is a dream\" and Shakespeare's \"we are such stuff as\ndreams are made on,\" this last a yet more tragic sentence than\nCalder\u00f3n's, for whereas the Castilian only declares that our life is a\ndream, but not that we ourselves are the dreamers of it, the Englishman\nmakes us ourselves a dream, a dream that dreams.\n\nThe vanity of the passing world and love are the two fundamental and\nheart-penetrating notes of true poetry. And they are two notes of which\nneither can be sounded without causing the other to vibrate. The feeling\nof the vanity of the passing world kindles love in us, the only thing\nthat triumphs over the vain and transitory, the only thing that fills\nlife again and eternalizes it. In appearance at any rate, for in\nreality.... And love, above all when it struggles against destiny,\noverwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world of\nappearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny is\novercome and liberty is law.\n\nEverything passes! Such is the refrain of those who have drunk, lips to\nthe spring, of the fountain of life, of those who have tasted of the\nfruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.\n\nTo be, to be for ever, to be without ending! thirst of being, thirst of\nbeing more! hunger of God! thirst of love eternalizing and eternal! to\nbe for ever! to be God!\n\n\"Ye shall be as gods!\" we are told in Genesis that the serpent said to\nthe first pair of lovers (Gen. iii. 5). \"If in this life only we have\nhope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable,\" wrote the Apostle (1\nCor. xv. 19); and all religion has sprung historically from the cult of\nthe dead--that is to say, from the cult of immortality.\n\nThe tragic Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that the free man thinks of\nnothing less than of death; but this free man is a dead man, free from\nthe impulse of life, for want of love, the slave of his liberty. This\nthought that I must die and the enigma of what will come after death is\nthe very palpitation of my consciousness. When I contemplate the green\nserenity of the fields or look into the depths of clear eyes through\nwhich shines a fellow-soul, my consciousness dilates, I feel the\ndiastole of the soul and am bathed in the flood of the life that flows\nabout me, and I believe in my future; but instantly the voice of mystery\nwhispers to me, \"Thou shalt cease to be!\" the angel of Death touches me\nwith his wing, and the systole of the soul floods the depths of my\nspirit with the blood of divinity.\n\nLike Pascal, I do not understand those who assert that they care not a\nfarthing for these things, and this indifference \"in a matter that\ntouches themselves, their eternity, their all, exasperates me rather\nthan moves me to compassion, astonishes and shocks me,\" and he who feels\nthus \"is for me,\" as for Pascal, whose are the words just quoted, \"a\nmonster.\"\n\nIt has been said a thousand times and in a thousand books that\nancestor-worship is for the most part the source of primitive religions,\nand it may be strictly said that what most distinguishes man from the\nother animals is that, in one form or another, he guards his dead and\ndoes not give them over to the neglect of teeming mother earth; he is an\nanimal that guards its dead. And from what does he thus guard them? From\nwhat does he so futilely protect them? The wretched consciousness\nshrinks from its own annihilation, and, just as an animal spirit, newly\nsevered from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with the\nworld and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needs\ndesire to possess another life than that of the world itself. And so the\nearth would run the risk of becoming a vast cemetery before the dead\nthemselves should die again.\n\nWhen mud huts or straw shelters, incapable of resisting the inclemency\nof the weather, sufficed for the living, tumuli were raised for the\ndead, and stone was used for sepulchres before it was used for houses.\nIt is the strong-builded houses of the dead that have withstood the\nages, not the houses of the living; not the temporary lodgings but the\npermanent habitations.\n\nThis cult, not of death but of immortality, originates and preserves\nreligions. In the midst of the delirium of destruction, Robespierre\ninduced the Convention to declare the existence of the Supreme Being and\n\"the consolatory principle of the immortality of the soul,\" the\nIncorruptible being dismayed at the idea of having himself one day to\nturn to corruption.\n\nA disease? Perhaps; but he who pays no heed to his disease is heedless\nof his health, and man is an animal essentially and substantially\ndiseased. A disease? Perhaps it may be, like life itself to which it is\nthrall, and perhaps the only health possible may be death; but this\ndisease is the fount of all vigorous health. From the depth of this\nanguish, from the abyss of the feeling of our mortality, we emerge into\nthe light of another heaven, as from the depth of Hell Dante emerged to\nbehold the stars once again--\n\n    _e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle._\n\nAlthough this meditation upon mortality may soon induce in us a sense of\nanguish, it fortifies us in the end. Retire, reader, into yourself and\nimagine a slow dissolution of yourself--the light dimming about you--all\nthings becoming dumb and soundless, enveloping you in silence--the\nobjects that you handle crumbling away between your hands--the ground\nslipping from under your feet--your very memory vanishing as if in a\nswoon--everything melting away from you into nothingness and you\nyourself also melting away--the very consciousness of nothingness,\nmerely as the phantom harbourage of a shadow, not even remaining to you.\n\nI have heard it related of a poor harvester who died in a hospital bed,\nthat when the priest went to anoint his hands with the oil of extreme\nunction, he refused to open his right hand, which clutched a few dirty\ncoins, not considering that very soon neither his hand nor he himself\nwould be his own any more. And so we close and clench, not our hand, but\nour heart, seeking to clutch the world in it.\n\nA friend confessed to me that, foreseeing while in the full vigour of\nphysical health the near approach of a violent death, he proposed to\nconcentrate his life and spend the few days which he calculated still\nremained to him in writing a book. Vanity of vanities!\n\nIf at the death of the body which sustains me, and which I call mine to\ndistinguish it from the self that is I, my consciousness returns to the\nabsolute unconsciousness from which it sprang, and if a like fate\nbefalls all my brothers in humanity, then is our toil-worn human race\nnothing but a fatidical procession of phantoms, going from nothingness\nto nothingness, and humanitarianism the most inhuman thing known.\n\nAnd the remedy is not that suggested in the quatrain that runs--\n\n    _Cada vez que considero\n    que me tengo de morir,\n    tiendo la capa en el suelo\n    y no me harto de dormir._[11]\n\nNo! The remedy is to consider our mortal destiny without flinching, to\nfasten our gaze upon the gaze of the Sphinx, for it is thus that the\nmalevolence of its spell is discharmed.\n\nIf we all die utterly, wherefore does everything exist? Wherefore? It is\nthe Wherefore of the Sphinx; it is the Wherefore that corrodes the\nmarrow of the soul; it is the begetter of that anguish which gives us\nthe love of hope.\n\nAmong the poetic laments of the unhappy Cowper there are some lines\nwritten under the oppression of delirium, in which, believing himself to\nbe the mark of the Divine vengeance, he exclaims--\n\n    Hell might afford my miseries a shelter.\n\nThis is the Puritan sentiment, the preoccupation with sin and\npredestination; but read the much more terrible words of S\u00e9nancour,\nexpressive of the Catholic, not the Protestant, despair, when he makes\nhis Obermann say, \"L'homme est p\u00e9rissable. Il se peut; mais p\u00e9rissons en\nr\u00e9sistant, et, si le n\u00e9ant nous est r\u00e9serv\u00e9, ne faisons pas que ce soit\nune justice.\" And I must confess, painful though the confession be, that\nin the days of the simple faith of my childhood, descriptions of the\ntortures of hell, however terrible, never made me tremble, for I always\nfelt that nothingness was much more terrifying. He who suffers lives,\nand he who lives suffering, even though over the portal of his abode is\nwritten \"Abandon all hope!\" loves and hopes. It is better to live in\npain than to cease to be in peace. The truth is that I could not\nbelieve in this atrocity of Hell, of an eternity of punishment, nor did\nI see any more real hell than nothingness and the prospect of it. And I\ncontinue in the belief that if we all believed in our salvation from\nnothingness we should all be better.\n\nWhat is this _joie de vivre_ that they talk about nowadays? Our hunger\nfor God, our thirst of immortality, of survival, will always stifle in\nus this pitiful enjoyment of the life that passes and abides not. It is\nthe frenzied love of life, the love that would have life to be unending,\nthat most often urges us to long for death. \"If it is true that I am to\ndie utterly,\" we say to ourselves, \"then once I am annihilated the world\nhas ended so far as I am concerned--it is finished. Why, then, should it\nnot end forthwith, so that no new consciousnesses, doomed to suffer the\ntormenting illusion of a transient and apparential existence, may come\ninto being? If, the illusion of living being shattered, living for the\nmere sake of living or for the sake of others who are likewise doomed to\ndie, does not satisfy the soul, what is the good of living? Our best\nremedy is death.\" And thus it is that we chant the praises of the\nnever-ending rest because of our dread of it, and speak of liberating\ndeath.\n\nLeopardi, the poet of sorrow, of annihilation, having lost the ultimate\nillusion, that of believing in his immortality--\n\n        _Peri l'inganno estremo\n    ch'eterno io mi credei_,\n\nspoke to his heart of _l'infinita vanit\u00e1 del tutto_, and perceived how\nclose is the kinship between love and death, and how \"when love is born\ndeep down in the heart, simultaneously a languid and weary desire to die\nis felt in the breast.\" The greater part of those who seek death at\ntheir own hand are moved thereto by love; it is the supreme longing for\nlife, for more life, the longing to prolong and perpetuate life, that\nurges them to death, once they are persuaded of the vanity of this\nlonging.\n\nThe problem is tragic and eternal, and the more we seek to escape from\nit, the more it thrusts itself upon us. Four-and-twenty centuries ago,\nin his dialogue on the immortality of the soul, the serene Plato--but\nwas he serene?--spoke of the uncertainty of our dream of being immortal\nand of the _risk_ that the dream might be vain, and from his own soul\nthere escaped this profound cry--Glorious is the risk!--_kalos\ngar o kindunos_, glorious is the risk that we are able to run of our\nsouls never dying--a sentence that was the germ of Pascal's famous\nargument of the wager.\n\nFaced with this risk, I am presented with arguments designed to\neliminate it, arguments demonstrating the absurdity of the belief in the\nimmortality of the soul; but these arguments fail to make any impression\nupon me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it is\nnot with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die--no; I\nneither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to live for\never and ever and ever. I want this \"I\" to live--this poor \"I\" that I am\nand that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem of\nthe duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me.\n\nI am the centre of my universe, the centre of the universe, and in my\nsupreme anguish I cry with Michelet, \"Mon moi, ils m'arrachent mon moi!\"\nWhat is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own\nsoul? (Matt. xvi. 26). Egoism, you say? There is nothing more universal\nthan the individual, for what is the property of each is the property of\nall. Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do\nto sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to\neach. That which we call egoism is the principle of psychic gravity, the\nnecessary postulate. \"Love thy neighbour as thyself,\" we are told, the\npresupposition being that each man loves himself; and it is not said\n\"Love thyself.\" And, nevertheless, we do not know how to love ourselves.\n\nPut aside the persistence of your own self and ponder what they tell\nyou. Sacrifice yourself to your children! And sacrifice yourself to them\nbecause they are yours, part and prolongation of yourself, and they in\ntheir turn will sacrifice themselves to their children, and these\nchildren to theirs, and so it will go on without end, a sterile\nsacrifice by which nobody profits. I came into the world to create my\nself, and what is to become of all our selves? Live for the True, the\nGood, the Beautiful! We shall see presently the supreme vanity and the\nsupreme insincerity of this hypocritical attitude.\n\n\"That art thou!\" they tell me with the Upanishads. And I answer: Yes, I\nam that, if that is I and all is mine, and mine the totality of things.\nAs mine I love the All, and I love my neighbour because he lives in me\nand is part of my consciousness, because he is like me, because he is\nmine.\n\nOh, to prolong this blissful moment, to sleep, to eternalize oneself in\nit! Here and now, in this discreet and diffused light, in this lake of\nquietude, the storm of the heart appeased and stilled the echoes of the\nworld! Insatiable desire now sleeps and does not even dream; use and\nwont, blessed use and wont, are the rule of my eternity; my disillusions\nhave died with my memories, and with my hopes my fears.\n\nAnd they come seeking to deceive us with a deceit of deceits, telling us\nthat nothing is lost, that everything is transformed, shifts and\nchanges, that not the least particle of matter is annihilated, not the\nleast impulse of energy is lost, and there are some who pretend to\nconsole us with this! Futile consolation! It is not my matter or my\nenergy that is the cause of my disquiet, for they are not mine if I\nmyself am not mine--that is, if I am not eternal. No, my longing is not\nto be submerged in the vast All, in an infinite and eternal Matter or\nEnergy, or in God; not to be possessed by God, but to possess Him, to\nbecome myself God, yet without ceasing to be I myself, I who am now\nspeaking to you. Tricks of monism avail us nothing; we crave the\nsubstance and not the shadow of immortality.\n\nMaterialism, you say? Materialism? Without doubt; but either our spirit\nis likewise some kind of matter or it is nothing. I dread the idea of\nhaving to tear myself away from my flesh; I dread still more the idea of\nhaving to tear myself away from everything sensible and material, from\nall substance. Yes, perhaps this merits the name of materialism; and if\nI grapple myself to God with all my powers and all my senses, it is that\nHe may carry me in His arms beyond death, looking into these eyes of\nmine with the light of His heaven when the light of earth is dimming in\nthem for ever. Self-illusion? Talk not to me of illusion--let me live!\n\nThey also call this pride--\"stinking pride\" Leopardi called it--and they\nask us who are we, vile earthworms, to pretend to immortality; in virtue\nof what? wherefore? by what right? \"In virtue of what?\" you ask; and I\nreply, In virtue of what do we now live? \"Wherefore?\"--and wherefore do\nwe now exist? \"By what right?\"--and by what right are we? To exist is\njust as gratuitous as to go on existing for ever. Do not let us talk of\nmerit or of right or of the wherefore of our longing, which is an end in\nitself, or we shall lose our reason in a vortex of absurdities. I do not\nclaim any right or merit; it is only a necessity; I need it in order to\nlive.\n\nAnd you, who are you? you ask me; and I reply with Obermann, \"For the\nuniverse, nothing; for myself, everything!\" Pride? Is it pride to want\nto be immortal? Unhappy men that we are! 'Tis a tragic fate, without a\ndoubt, to have to base the affirmation of immortality upon the insecure\nand slippery foundation of the desire for immortality; but to condemn\nthis desire on the ground that we believe it to have been proved to be\nunattainable, without undertaking the proof, is merely supine. I am\ndreaming ...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me\nfrom it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for\nimmortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really\nbelieve in it ...? And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me,\nwherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to ask\nthe reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the\nprinciple.\n\nBut these are things which it is impossible to discuss.\n\nIt is related in the book of the Acts of the Apostles how wherever Paul\nwent the Jews, moved with envy, were stirred up to persecute him. They\nstoned him in Iconium and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, in spite of the\nwonders that he worked therein; they scourged him in Philippi of\nMacedonia and persecuted his brethren in Thessalonica and Berea. He\narrived at Athens, however, the noble city of the intellectuals, over\nwhich brooded the sublime spirit of Plato--the Plato of the gloriousness\nof the risk of immortality; and there Paul disputed with Epicureans and\nStoics. And some said of him, \"What doth this babbler (_spermologos_)\nmean?\" and others, \"He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods\"\n(Acts xvii. 18), \"and they took him and brought him unto Areopagus,\nsaying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?\nfor thou bringest certain strange things to our ears; we would know,\ntherefore, what these things mean\" (verses 19-20). And then follows that\nwonderful characterization of those Athenians of the decadence, those\ndainty connoisseurs of the curious, \"for all the Athenians and strangers\nwhich were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or\nto hear some new thing\" (verse 21). A wonderful stroke which depicts for\nus the condition of mind of those who had learned from the _Odyssey_\nthat the gods plot and achieve the destruction of mortals in order that\ntheir posterity may have something to narrate!\n\nHere Paul stands, then, before the subtle Athenians, before the\n_gr\u00e6uli_, men of culture and tolerance, who are ready to welcome and\nexamine every doctrine, who neither stone nor scourge nor imprison any\nman for professing these or those doctrines--here he stands where\nliberty of conscience is respected and every opinion is given an\nattentive hearing. And he raises his voice in the midst of the Areopagus\nand speaks to them as it was fitting to speak to the cultured citizens\nof Athens, and all listen to him, agog to hear the latest novelty. But\nwhen he begins to speak to them of the resurrection of the dead their\nstock of patience and tolerance comes to an end, and some mock him, and\nothers say: \"We will hear thee again of this matter!\" intending not to\nhear him. And a similar thing happened to him at C\u00e6sarea when he came\nbefore the Roman pr\u00e6tor Felix, likewise a broad-minded and cultured man,\nwho mitigated the hardships of his imprisonment, and wished to hear and\ndid hear him discourse of righteousness and of temperance; but when he\nspoke of the judgement to come, Felix said, terrified (_emphobos\ngenomenos_): \"Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season\nI will call for thee\" (Acts xxiv. 22-25). And in his audience before\nKing Agrippa, when Festus the governor heard him speak of the\nresurrection of the dead, he exclaimed: \"Thou art mad, Paul; much\nlearning hath made thee mad\" (Acts xxvi. 24).\n\nWhatever of truth there may have been in Paul's discourse in the\nAreopagus, and even if there were none, it is certain that this\nadmirable account plainly shows how far Attic tolerance goes and where\nthe patience of the intellectuals ends. They all listen to you, calmly\nand smilingly, and at times they encourage you, saying: \"That's\nstrange!\" or, \"He has brains!\" or \"That's suggestive,\" or \"How fine!\" or\n\"Pity that a thing so beautiful should not be true!\" or \"this makes one\nthink!\" But as soon as you speak to them of resurrection and life after\ndeath, they lose their patience and cut short your remarks and exclaim,\n\"Enough of this! we will talk about this another day!\" And it is about\nthis, my poor Athenians, my intolerant intellectuals, it is about this\nthat I am going to talk to you here.\n\nAnd even if this belief be absurd, why is its exposition less tolerated\nthan that of others much more absurd? Why this manifest hostility to\nsuch a belief? Is it fear? Is it, perhaps, spite provoked by inability\nto share it?\n\nAnd sensible men, those who do not intend to let themselves be deceived,\nkeep on dinning into our ears the refrain that it is no use giving way\nto folly and kicking against the pricks, for what cannot be is\nimpossible. The manly attitude, they say, is to resign oneself to fate;\nsince we are not immortal, do not let us want to be so; let us submit\nourselves to reason without tormenting ourselves about what is\nirremediable, and so making life more gloomy and miserable. This\nobsession, they add, is a disease. Disease, madness, reason ... the\neverlasting refrain! Very well then--No! I do not submit to reason, and\nI rebel against it, and I persist in creating by the energy of faith my\nimmortalizing God, and in forcing by my will the stars out of their\ncourses, for if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed we should say to\nthat mountain, \"Remove hence,\" and it would remove, and nothing would be\nimpossible to us (Matt. xvii. 20).\n\nThere you have that \"thief of energies,\" as he[12] so obtusely called\nChrist who sought to wed nihilism with the struggle for existence, and\nhe talks to you about courage. His heart craved the eternal all while\nhis head convinced him of nothingness, and, desperate and mad to defend\nhimself from himself, he cursed that which he most loved. Because he\ncould not be Christ, he blasphemed against Christ. Bursting with his own\nself, he wished himself unending and dreamed his theory of eternal\nrecurrence, a sorry counterfeit of immortality, and, full of pity for\nhimself, he abominated all pity. And there are some who say that his is\nthe philosophy of strong men! No, it is not. My health and my strength\nurge me to perpetuate myself. His is the doctrine of weaklings who\naspire to be strong, but not of the strong who are strong. Only the\nfeeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire\nfor the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for\nperpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance\nof life overflows upon the other side of death.\n\nBefore this terrible mystery of mortality, face to face with the Sphinx,\nman adopts different attitudes and seeks in various ways to console\nhimself for having been born. And now it occurs to him to take it as a\ndiversion, and he says to himself with Renan that this universe is a\nspectacle that God presents to Himself, and that it behoves us to carry\nout the intentions of the great Stage-Manager and contribute to make the\nspectacle the most brilliant and the most varied that may be. And they\nhave made a religion of art, a cure for the metaphysical evil, and\ninvented the meaningless phrase of art for art's sake.\n\nAnd it does not suffice them. If the man who tells you that he writes,\npaints, sculptures, or sings for his own amusement, gives his work to\nthe public, he lies; he lies if he puts his name to his writing,\npainting, statue, or song. He wishes, at the least, to leave behind a\nshadow of his spirit, something that may survive him. If the _Imitation\nof Christ_ is anonymous, it is because its author sought the eternity of\nthe soul and did not trouble himself about that of the name. The man of\nletters who shall tell you that he despises fame is a lying rascal. Of\nDante, the author of those three-and-thirty vigorous verses (_Purg._ xi.\n85-117) on the vanity of worldly glory, Boccaccio says that he relished\nhonours and pomps more perhaps than suited with his conspicuous virtue.\nThe keenest desire of his condemned souls is that they may be remembered\nand talked of here on earth, and this is the chief solace that lightens\nthe darkness of his Inferno. And he himself confessed that his aim in\nexpounding the concept of Monarchy was not merely that he might be of\nservice to others, but that he might win for his own glory the palm of\nso great prize (_De Monarchia_, lib. i., cap. i.). What more? Even of\nthat holy man, seemingly the most indifferent to worldly vanity, the\nPoor Little One of Assisi, it is related in the _Legenda Trium Sociorum_\nthat he said: _Adhuc adorabor per totum mundum!_--You will see how I\nshall yet be adored by all the world! (II. _Celano_, i. 1). And even of\nGod Himself the theologians say that He created the world for the\nmanifestation of His glory.\n\nWhen doubts invade us and cloud our faith in the immortality of the\nsoul, a vigorous and painful impulse is given to the anxiety to\nperpetuate our name and fame, to grasp at least a shadow of immortality.\nAnd hence this tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survive\nin some way in the memory of others and of posterity. It is this\nstruggle, a thousand times more terrible than the struggle for life,\nthat gives its tone, colour, and character to our society, in which the\nmedieval faith in the immortal soul is passing away. Each one seeks to\naffirm himself, if only in appearance.\n\nOnce the needs of hunger are satisfied--and they are soon satisfied--the\nvanity, the necessity--for it is a necessity--arises of imposing\nourselves upon and surviving in others. Man habitually sacrifices his\nlife to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts\neven of his weaknesses and his misfortunes, for want of anything better\nto boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention,\nstruts about with a bandaged finger. And vanity, what is it but\neagerness for survival?\n\nThe vain man is in like case with the avaricious--he takes the means for\nthe end; forgetting the end he pursues the means for its own sake and\ngoes no further. The seeming to be something, conducive to being it,\nends by forming our objective. We need that others should believe in our\nsuperiority to them in order that we may believe in it ourselves, and\nupon their belief base our faith in our own persistence, or at least in\nthe persistence of our fame. We are more grateful to him who\ncongratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we are\nto him who recognizes the truth or the goodness of the cause itself. A\nrabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world and\ncharacterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with genius\nthan hit the mark with the crowd. Rousseau has said in his _\u00c9mile_ (book\niv.): \"Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the\ntruth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well\nthat his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports\nit because it is his. There is not a single one of them who, if he came\nto know the true and the false, would not prefer the falsehood that he\nhad found to the truth discovered by another. Where is the philosopher\nwho would not willingly deceive mankind for his own glory? Where is he\nwho in the secret of his heart does not propose to himself any other\nobject than to distinguish himself? Provided that he lifts himself above\nthe vulgar, provided that he outshines the brilliance of his\ncompetitors, what does he demand more? The essential thing is to think\ndifferently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists\nhe would be a believer.\" How much substantial truth there is in these\ngloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity!\n\nThis violent struggle for the perpetuation of our name extends backwards\ninto the past, just as it aspires to conquer the future; we contend\nwith the dead because we, the living, are obscured beneath their shadow.\nWe are jealous of the geniuses of former times, whose names, standing\nout like the landmarks of history, rescue the ages from oblivion. The\nheaven of fame is not very large, and the more there are who enter it\nthe less is the share of each. The great names of the past rob us of our\nplace in it; the space which they fill in the popular memory they usurp\nfrom us who aspire to occupy it. And so we rise up in revolt against\nthem, and hence the bitterness with which all those who seek after fame\nin the world of letters judge those who have already attained it and are\nin enjoyment of it. If additions continue to be made to the wealth of\nliterature, there will come a day of sifting, and each one fears lest he\nbe caught in the meshes of the sieve. In attacking the masters,\nirreverent youth is only defending itself; the iconoclast or\nimage-breaker is a Stylite who erects himself as an image, an _icon_.\n\"Comparisons are odious,\" says the familiar adage, and the reason is\nthat we wish to be unique. Do not tell Fernandez that he is one of the\nmost talented Spaniards of the younger generation, for though he will\naffect to be gratified by the eulogy he is really annoyed by it; if,\nhowever, you tell him that he is the most talented man in Spain--well\nand good! But even that is not sufficient: one of the worldwide\nreputations would be more to his liking, but he is only fully satisfied\nwith being esteemed the first in all countries and all ages. The more\nalone, the nearer to that unsubstantial immortality, the immortality of\nthe name, for great names diminish one another.\n\nWhat is the meaning of that irritation which we feel when we believe\nthat we are robbed of a phrase, or a thought, or an image, which we\nbelieved to be our own, when we are plagiarized? Robbed? Can it indeed\nbe ours once we have given it to the public? Only because it is ours we\nprize it; and we are fonder of the false money that preserves our\nimpress than of the coin of pure gold from which our effigy and our\nlegend has been effaced. It very commonly happens that it is when the\nname of a writer is no longer in men's mouths that he most influences\nhis public, his mind being then disseminated and infused in the minds of\nthose who have read him, whereas he was quoted chiefly when his thoughts\nand sayings, clashing with those generally received, needed the\nguarantee of a name. What was his now belongs to all, and he lives in\nall. But for him the garlands have faded, and he believes himself to\nhave failed. He hears no more either the applause or the silent tremor\nof the heart of those who go on reading him. Ask any sincere artist\nwhich he would prefer, whether that his work should perish and his\nmemory survive, or that his work should survive and his memory perish,\nand you will see what he will tell you, if he is really sincere. When a\nman does not work merely in order to live and carry on, he works in\norder to survive. To work for the work's sake is not work but play. And\nplay? We will talk about that later on.\n\nA tremendous passion is this longing that our memory may be rescued, if\nit is possible, from the oblivion which overtakes others. From it\nsprings envy, the cause, according to the biblical narrative, of the\ncrime with which human history opened: the murder of Abel by his brother\nCain. It was not a struggle for bread--it was a struggle to survive in\nGod, in the divine memory. Envy is a thousand times more terrible than\nhunger, for it is spiritual hunger. If what we call the problem of life,\nthe problem of bread, were once solved, the earth would be turned into a\nhell by the emergence in a more violent form of the struggle for\nsurvival.\n\nFor the sake of a name man is ready to sacrifice not only life but\nhappiness--life as a matter of course. \"Let me die, but let my fame\nlive!\" exclaimed Rodrigo Arias in _Las Mocedades del Cid_ when he fell\nmortally wounded by Don Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez de Lara. \"Courage, Girolamo, for you\nwill long be remembered; death is bitter, but fame eternal!\" cried\nGirolamo Olgiati, the disciple of Cola Montano and the murderer,\ntogether with his fellow-conspirators Lampugnani and Visconti, of\nGaleazzo Sforza, tyrant of Milan. And there are some who covet even the\ngallows for the sake of acquiring fame, even though it be an infamous\nfame: _avidus mal\u00e6 fam\u00e6_, as Tacitus says.\n\nAnd this erostratism, what is it at bottom but the longing for\nimmortality, if not for substantial and concrete immortality, at any\nrate for the shadowy immortality of the name?\n\nAnd in this there are degrees. If a man despises the applause of the\ncrowd of to-day, it is because he seeks to survive in renewed minorities\nfor generations. \"Posterity is an accumulation of minorities,\" said\nGounod. He wishes to prolong himself in time rather than in space. The\ncrowd soon overthrows its own idols and the statue lies broken at the\nfoot of the pedestal without anyone heeding it; but those who win the\nhearts of the elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship in\nsome shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but capable of preserving them\nfrom the flood of oblivion. The artist sacrifices the extensiveness of\nhis fame to its duration; he is anxious rather to endure for ever in\nsome little corner than to occupy a brilliant second place in the whole\nuniverse; he prefers to be an atom, eternal and conscious of himself,\nrather than to be for a brief moment the consciousness of the whole\nuniverse; he sacrifices infinitude to eternity.\n\nAnd they keep on wearying our ears with this chorus of Pride! stinking\nPride! Pride, to wish to leave an ineffaceable name? Pride? It is like\ncalling the thirst for riches a thirst for pleasure. No, it is not so\nmuch the longing for pleasure that drives us poor folk to seek money as\nthe terror of poverty, just as it was not the desire for glory but the\nterror of hell that drove men in the Middle Ages to the cloister with\nits _acedia_. Neither is this wish to leave a name pride, but terror of\nextinction. We aim at being all because in that we see the only means of\nescaping from being nothing. We wish to save our memory--at any rate,\nour memory. How long will it last? At most as long as the human race\nlasts. And what if we shall save our memory in God?\n\nUnhappy, I know well, are these confessions; but from the depth of\nunhappiness springs new life, and only by draining the lees of spiritual\nsorrow can we at last taste the honey that lies at the bottom of the cup\nof life. Anguish leads us to consolation.\n\nThis thirst for eternal life is appeased by many, especially by the\nsimple, at the fountain of religious faith; but to drink of this is not\ngiven to all. The institution whose primordial end is to protect this\nfaith in the personal immortality of the soul is Catholicism; but\nCatholicism has sought to rationalize this faith by converting religion\ninto theology, by offering a philosophy, and a philosophy of the\nthirteenth century, as a basis for vital belief. This and its\nconsequences we will now proceed to examine.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[11] Each time that I consider that it is my lot to die, I spread my\ncloak upon the ground and am never surfeited with sleeping.\n\n[12] Nietzsche.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM\n\n\nLet us now approach the Christian, Catholic, Pauline, or Athanasian\nsolution of our inward vital problem, the hunger of immortality.\n\nChristianity sprang from the confluence of two mighty spiritual\nstreams--the one Judaic, the other Hellenic--each of which had already\ninfluenced the other, and Rome finally gave it a practical stamp and\nsocial permanence.\n\nIt has been asserted, perhaps somewhat precipitately, that primitive\nChristianity was an-eschatological, that faith in another life after\ndeath is not clearly manifested in it, but rather a belief in the\nproximate end of the world and establishment of the kingdom of God, a\nbelief known as chiliasm. But were they not fundamentally one and the\nsame thing? Faith in the immortality of the soul, the nature of which\nwas not perhaps very precisely defined, may be said to be a kind of\ntacit understanding or supposition underlying the whole of the Gospel;\nand it is the mental orientation of many of those who read it to-day, an\norientation contrary to that of the Christians from among whom the\nGospel sprang, that prevents them from seeing this. Without doubt all\nthat about the second coming of Christ, when he shall come among the\nclouds, clothed with majesty and great power, to judge the quick and the\ndead, to open to some the kingdom of heaven and to cast others into\nGehenna, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, may be\nunderstood in a chiliastic sense; and it is even said of Christ in the\nGospel (Mark ix. I), that there were with him some who should not taste\nof death till they had seen the kingdom of God--that is, that the\nkingdom should come during their generation. And in the same chapter,\nverse 10, it is said of Peter and James and John, who went up with Jesus\nto the Mount of Transfiguration and heard him say that he would rise\nagain from the dead, that \"they kept that saying within themselves,\nquestioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean.\"\nAnd at all events the Gospel was written when this belief, the basis and\n_raison d'\u00eatre_ of Christianity, was in process of formation. See Matt.\nxxii. 29-32; Mark xii. 24-27; Luke xvi. 22-31; xx. 34-37; John v. 24-29;\nvi. 40, 54, 58; viii. 51; xi. 25, 56; xiv. 2, 19. And, above all, that\npassage in Matt. xxvii. 52, which tells how at the resurrection of\nChrist \"many bodies of the saints which slept arose.\"\n\nAnd this was not a natural resurrection. No; the Christian faith was\nborn of the faith that Jesus did not remain dead, but that God raised\nhim up again, and that this resurrection was a fact; but this did not\npresuppose a mere immortality of the soul in the philosophical sense\n(see Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, Prolegomena, v. 4). For the first\nFathers of the Church themselves the immortality of the soul was not a\nthing pertaining to the natural order; the teaching of the Divine\nScriptures, as Nimesius said, sufficed for its demonstration, and it\nwas, according to Lactantius, a gift--and as such gratuitous--of God.\nBut more of this later.\n\nChristianity sprang, as we have said, from two great spiritual\nstreams--the Judaic and the Hellenic--each one of which had arrived on\nits account, if not at a precise definition of, at any rate at a\ndefinite yearning for, another life. Among the Jews faith in another\nlife was neither general nor clear; but they were led to it by faith in\na personal and living God, the formation of which faith comprises all\ntheir spiritual history.\n\nJahw\u00e9, the Judaic God, began by being one god among many others--the\nGod of the people of Israel, revealed among the thunders of the tempest\non Mount Sinai. But he was so jealous that he demanded that worship\nshould be paid to him alone, and it was by way of monocultism that the\nJews arrived at monotheism. He was adored as a living force, not as a\nmetaphysical entity, and he was the god of battles. But this God of\nsocial and martial origin, to whose genesis we shall have to return\nlater, became more inward and personal in the prophets, and in becoming\nmore inward and personal he thereby became more individual and more\nuniversal. He is the Jahw\u00e9 who, instead of loving Israel because Israel\nis his son, takes Israel for a son because he loves him (Hosea xi. 1).\nAnd faith in the personal God, in the Father of men, carries with it\nfaith in the eternalization of the individual man--a faith which had\nalready dawned in Pharisaism even before Christ.\n\nHellenic culture, on its side, ended by discovering death; and to\ndiscover death is to discover the hunger of immortality. This longing\ndoes not appear in the Homeric poems, which are not initial, but final,\nin their character, marking not the start but the close of a\ncivilization. They indicate the transition from the old religion of\nNature, of Zeus, to the more spiritual religion of Apollo--of\nredemption. But the popular and inward religion of the Eleusinian\nmysteries, the worship of souls and ancestors, always persisted\nunderneath. \"In so far as it is possible to speak of a Delphic theology,\namong its more important elements must be counted the belief in the\ncontinuation of the life of souls after death in its popular forms, and\nin the worship of the souls of the dead.\"[13] There were the Titanic and\nthe Dionysiac elements, and it was the duty of man, according to the\nOrphic doctrine, to free himself from the fetters of the body, in which\nthe soul was like a captive in a prison (see Rohde, _Psyche_, \"Die\nOrphiker,\" 4). The Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence is an Orphic\nidea. But the idea of the immortality of the soul was not a\nphilosophical principle. The attempt of Empedocles to harmonize a\nhylozoistic system with spiritualism proved that a philosophical natural\nscience cannot by itself lead to a corroboration of the axiom of the\nperpetuity of the individual soul; it could only serve as a support to a\ntheological speculation. It was by a contradiction that the first Greek\nphilosophers affirmed immortality, by abandoning natural philosophy and\nintruding into theology, by formulating not an Apollonian but a\nDionysiac and Orphic dogma. But \"an immortality of the soul as such, in\nvirtue of its own nature and condition as an imperishable divine force\nin the mortal body, was never an object of popular Hellenic belief\"\n(Rohde, _op. cit._).\n\nRecall the _Ph\u00e6do_ of Plato and the neo-platonic lucubrations. In them\nthe yearning for personal immortality already shows itself--a yearning\nwhich, as it was left totally unsatisfied by reason, produced the\nHellenic pessimism. For, as Pfleiderer very well observes\n(_Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtliche Grundlage_, 3. Berlin, 1896),\n\"no people ever came upon the earth so serene and sunny as the Greeks in\nthe youthful days of their historical existence ... but no people\nchanged so completely their idea of the value of life. The Hellenism\nwhich ended in the religious speculations of neo-pythagorism and\nneo-platonism viewed this world, which had once appeared to it so joyous\nand radiant, as an abode of darkness and error, and earthly existence as\na period of trial which could never be too quickly traversed.\" Nirvana\nis an Hellenic idea.\n\nThus Jews and Greeks each arrived independently at the real discovery\nof death--a discovery which occasions, in peoples as in men, the\nentrance into spiritual puberty, the realization of the tragic sense of\nlife, and it is then that the living God is begotten by humanity. The\ndiscovery of death is that which reveals God to us, and the death of the\nperfect man, Christ, was the supreme revelation of death, being the\ndeath of the man who ought not to have died yet did die.\n\nSuch a discovery--that of immortality--prepared as it was by the Judaic\nand Hellenic religious processes, was a specifically Christian\ndiscovery. And its full achievement was due above all to Paul of Tarsus,\nthe hellenizing Jew and Pharisee. Paul had not personally known Jesus,\nand hence he discovered him as Christ. \"It may be said that the theology\nof the Apostle Paul is, in general, the first Christian theology. For\nhim it was a necessity; it was, in a certain sense, his substitution for\nthe lack of a personal knowledge of Jesus,\" says Weizs\u00e4cker (_Das\napostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche_. Freiburg-i.-B., 1892).\nHe did not know Jesus, but he felt him born again in himself, and thus\nhe could say, \"Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in\nme.\"[14] And he preached the Cross, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and\nunto the Greeks foolishness (I Cor. i. 23), and the central doctrine for\nthe converted Apostle was that of the resurrection of Christ. The\nimportant thing for him was that Christ had been made man and had died\nand had risen again, and not what he did in his life--not his ethical\nwork as a teacher, but his religious work as a giver of immortality. And\nhe it was who wrote those immortal words: \"Now if Christ be preached\nthat He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no\nresurrection from the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead,\nthen is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then is our\npreaching vain, and your faith is also vain.... Then they also which are\nfallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope\nin Christ, we are of all men most miserable\" (I Cor. xv. 12-19).\n\nAnd it is possible to affirm that thenceforward he who does not believe\nin the bodily resurrection of Christ may be Christophile but cannot be\nspecifically Christian. It is true that a Justin Martyr could say that\n\"all those are Christians who live in accordance with reason, even\nthough they may be deemed to be atheists, as, among the Greeks, Socrates\nand Heraclitus and other such\"; but this martyr, is he a martyr--that is\nto say a witness--of Christianity? No.\n\nAnd it was around this dogma, inwardly experienced by Paul, the dogma of\nthe resurrection and immortality of Christ, the guarantee of the\nresurrection and immortality of each believer, that the whole of\nChristology was built up. The God-man, the incarnate Word, came in order\nthat man, according to his mode, might be made God--that is, immortal.\nAnd the Christian God, the Father of Christ, a God necessarily\nanthropomorphic, is He who--as the Catechism of Christian Doctrine which\nwe were made to learn by heart at school says--created the world for\nman, for each man. And the end of redemption, in spite of appearances\ndue to an ethical deflection of a dogma properly religious, was to save\nus from death rather than from sin, or from sin in so far as sin implies\ndeath. And Christ died, or rather rose again, for _me_, for each one of\nus. And a certain solidarity was established between God and His\ncreature. Malebranche said that the first man fell _in order that_\nChrist might redeem us, rather than that Christ redeemed us _because_\nman had fallen.\n\nAfter the death of Paul years passed, and generations of Christianity\nwrought upon this central dogma and its consequences in order to\nsafeguard faith in the immortality of the individual soul, and the\nCouncil of Nic\u00e6a came, and with it the formidable Athanasius, whose\nname is still a battle-cry, an incarnation of the popular faith.\nAthanasius was a man of little learning but of great faith, and above\nall of popular faith, devoured by the hunger of immortality. And he\nopposed Arianism, which, like Unitarian and Socinian Protestantism,\nthreatened, although unknowingly and unintentionally, the foundation of\nthat belief. For the Arians, Christ was first and foremost a teacher--a\nteacher of morality, the wholly perfect man, and therefore the guarantee\nthat we may all attain to supreme perfection; but Athanasius felt that\nChrist cannot make us gods if he has not first made himself God; if his\nDivinity had been communicated, he could not have communicated it to us.\n\"He was not, therefore,\" he said, \"first man and then became God; but He\nwas first God and then became man in order that He might the better\ndeify us (_theopoi\u00eas\u00ea_)\" (_Orat._ i. 39). It was not the Logos of\nthe philosophers, the cosmological Logos, that Athanasius knew and\nadored;[15] and thus he instituted a separation between nature and\nrevelation. The Athanasian or Nicene Christ, who is the Catholic Christ,\nis not the cosmological, nor even, strictly, the ethical Christ; he is\nthe eternalizing, the deifying, the religious Christ. Harnack says of\nthis Christ, the Christ of Nicene or Catholic Christology, that he is\nessentially docetic--that is, apparential--because the process of the\ndivinization of the man in Christ was made in the interests of\neschatology. But which is the real Christ? Is it, indeed, that so-called\nhistorical Christ of rationalist exegesis who is diluted for us in a\nmyth or in a social atom?\n\nThis same Harnack, a Protestant rationalist, tells us that Arianism or\nUnitarianism would have been the death of Christianity, reducing it to\ncosmology and ethics, and that it served only as a bridge whereby the\nlearned might pass over to Catholicism--that is to say, from reason to\nfaith. To this same learned historian of dogmas it appears to be an\nindication of a perverse state of things that the man Athanasius, who\nsaved Christianity as the religion of a living communion with God,\nshould have obliterated the Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus,\nwhom neither Paul nor Athanasius knew personally, nor yet Harnack\nhimself. Among Protestants, this historical Jesus is subjected to the\nscalpel of criticism, while the Catholic Christ lives, the really\nhistorical Christ, he who lives throughout the centuries guaranteeing\nthe faith in personal immortality and personal salvation.\n\nAnd Athanasius had the supreme audacity of faith, that of asserting\nthings mutually contradictory: \"The complete contradiction that exists\nin the _homoousios_ carried in its train a whole army of\ncontradictions which increased as thought advanced,\" says Harnack. Yes,\nso it was, and so it had to be. And he adds: \"Dogma took leave for ever\nof clear thinking and tenable concepts, and habituated itself to the\ncontra-rational.\" In truth, it drew closer to life, which is\ncontra-rational and opposed to clear thinking. Not only are judgements\nof worth never rationalizable--they are anti-rational.\n\nAt Nic\u00e6a, then, as afterwards at the Vatican, victory rested with the\nidiots--taking this word in its proper, primitive, and etymological\nsense--the simple-minded, the rude and headstrong bishops, the\nrepresentatives of the genuine human spirit, the popular spirit, the\nspirit that does not want to die, in spite of whatever reason may say,\nand that seeks a guarantee, the most material possible, for this desire.\n\n_Quid ad \u00e6ternitatem?_ This is the capital question. And the Creed ends\nwith that phrase, _resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi\ns\u00e6culi_--the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.\nIn the cemetery of Mallona, in my native town of Bilbao, there is a\ntombstone on which this verse is carved:\n\n    _Aunque estamos en polvo convertidos,\n    en Ti, Se\u00f1or, nuestra esperanza f\u00eda,\n    que tornaremos a vivir vestidos\n    con la carne y la piel que nos cubria._[16]\n\n\"With the same bodies and souls that they had,\" as the Catechism says.\nSo much so, that it is orthodox Catholic doctrine that the happiness of\nthe blessed is not perfectly complete until they recover their bodies.\nThey lament in heaven, says our Brother Pedro Mal\u00f3n de Chaide of the\nOrder of St. Augustine, a Spaniard and a Basque,[17] and \"this lament\nsprings from their not being perfectly whole in heaven, for only the\nsoul is there; and although they cannot suffer, because they see God, in\nwhom they unspeakably delight, yet with all this it appears that they\nare not wholly content. They will be so when they are clothed with their\nown bodies.\"\n\nAnd to this central dogma of the resurrection in Christ and by Christ\ncorresponds likewise a central sacrament, the axis of popular Catholic\npiety--the Sacrament of the Eucharist. In it is administered the body of\nChrist, which is the bread of immortality.\n\nThis sacrament is genuinely realist--_dinglich_, as the Germans would\nsay--which may without great violence be translated \"material.\" It is\nthe sacrament most genuinely _ex opere operato_, for which is\nsubstituted among Protestants the idealistic sacrament of the word.\nFundamentally it is concerned with--and I say it with all possible\nrespect, but without wishing to sacrifice the expressiveness of the\nphrase--the eating and drinking of God, the Eternalizer, the feeding\nupon Him. Little wonder then if St. Teresa tells us that when she was\ncommunicating in the monastery of the Incarnation and in the second year\nof her being Prioress there, on the octave of St. Martin, and the\nFather, Fr. Juan de la Cruz, divided the Host between her and another\nsister, she thought that it was done not because there was any want of\nHosts, but because he wished to mortify her, \"for I had told him how\nmuch I delighted in Hosts of a large size. Yet I was not ignorant that\nthe size of the Host is of no moment, for I knew that our Lord is whole\nand entire in the smallest particle.\" Here reason pulls one way, feeling\nanother. And what importance for this feeling have the thousand and one\ndifficulties that arise from reflecting rationally upon the mystery of\nthis sacrament? What is a divine body? And the body, in so far as it is\nthe body of Christ, is it divine? What is an immortal and immortalizing\nbody? What is substance separated from the accidents? Nowadays we have\ngreatly refined our notion of materiality and substantiality; but there\nwere even some among the Fathers of the Church to whom the immateriality\nof God Himself was not a thing so clear and definite as it is for us.\nAnd this sacrament of the Eucharist is the immortalizing sacrament _par\nexcellence_, and therefore the axis of popular Catholic piety, and if it\nmay be so said, the most specifically religious of sacraments.\n\nFor what is specific in the Catholic religion is immortalization and not\njustification, in the Protestant sense. Rather is this latter ethical.\nIt was from Kant, in spite of what orthodox Protestants may think of\nhim, that Protestantism derived its penultimate conclusions--namely,\nthat religion rests upon morality, and not morality upon religion, as in\nCatholicism.\n\nThe preoccupation of sin has never been such a matter of anguish, or at\nany rate has never displayed itself with such an appearance of anguish,\namong Catholics. The sacrament of Confession contributes to this. And\nthere persists, perhaps, among Catholics more than among Protestants\nthe substance of the primitive Judaic and pagan conception of sin as\nsomething material and infectious and hereditary, which is cured by\nbaptism and absolution. In Adam all his posterity sinned, almost\nmaterially, and his sin was transmitted as a material disease is\ntransmitted. Renan, whose education was Catholic, was right, therefore,\nin calling to account the Protestant Amiel who accused him of not giving\ndue importance to sin. And, on the other hand, Protestantism, absorbed\nin this preoccupation with justification, which in spite of its\nreligious guise was taken more in an ethical sense than anything else,\nends by neutralizing and almost obliterating eschatology; it abandons\nthe Nicene symbol, falls into an anarchy of creeds, into pure religious\nindividualism and a vague esthetic, ethical, or cultured religiosity.\nWhat we may call \"other-worldliness\" (_Jenseitigkeit_) was obliterated\nlittle by little by \"this-worldliness\" (_Diesseitigkeit_); and this in\nspite of Kant, who wished to save it, but by destroying it. To its\nearthly vocation and passive trust in God is due the religious\ncoarseness of Lutheranism, which was almost at the point of expiring in\nthe age of the Enlightenment, of the _Aufkl\u00e4rung_, and which pietism,\ninfusing into it something of the religious sap of Catholicism, barely\nsucceeded in galvanizing a little. Hence the exactness of the remarks of\nOliveira Martins in his magnificent _History of Iberian Civilization_,\nin which he says (book iv., chap, iii.) that \"Catholicism produced\nheroes and Protestantism produced societies that are sensible, happy,\nwealthy, free, as far as their outer institutions go, but incapable of\nany great action, because their religion has begun by destroying in the\nheart of man all that made him capable of daring and noble\nself-sacrifice.\"\n\nTake any of the dogmatic systems that have resulted from the latest\nProtestant dissolvent analysis--that of Kaftan, the follower of Ritschl,\nfor example--and note the extent to which eschatology is reduced. And\nhis master, Albrecht Ritschl, himself says: \"The question regarding the\nnecessity of justification or forgiveness can only be solved by\nconceiving eternal life as the direct end and aim of that divine\noperation. But if the idea of eternal life be applied merely to our\nstate in the next life, then its content, too, lies beyond all\nexperience, and cannot form the basis of knowledge of a scientific kind.\nHopes and desires, though marked by the strongest subjective certainty,\nare not any the clearer for that, and contain in themselves no guarantee\nof the completeness of what one hopes or desires. Clearness and\ncompleteness of idea, however, are the conditions of comprehending\nanything--_i.e._, of understanding the necessary connection between the\nvarious elements of a thing, and between the thing and its given\npresuppositions. The Evangelical article of belief, therefore, that\njustification by faith establishes or brings with it assurance of\neternal life, is of no use theologically, so long as this purposive\naspect of justification cannot be verified in such experience as is\npossible now\" (_Rechtfertigung und Vers\u00f6hnung_, vol. iii., chap. vii.,\n52). All this is very rational, but ...\n\nIn the first edition of Melanchthon's _Loci Communes_, that of 1521, the\nfirst Lutheran theological work, its author omits all Trinitarian and\nChristological speculations, the dogmatic basis of eschatology. And Dr.\nHermann, professor at Marburg, the author of a book on the Christian's\ncommerce with God (_Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott_)--a book the\nfirst chapter of which treats of the opposition between mysticism and\nthe Christian religion, and which is, according to Harnack, the most\nperfect Lutheran manual--tells us in another place,[18] referring to\nthis Christological (or Athanasian) speculation, that \"the effective\nknowledge of God and of Christ, in which knowledge faith lives, is\nsomething entirely different. Nothing ought to find a place in Christian\ndoctrine that is not capable of helping man to recognize his sins, to\nobtain the grace of God, and to serve Him in truth. Until that\ntime--that is to say, until Luther--the Church had accepted much as\n_doctrina sacra_ which cannot absolutely contribute to confer upon man\nliberty of heart and tranquillity of conscience.\" For my part, I cannot\nconceive the liberty of a heart or the tranquillity of a conscience that\nare not sure of their perdurability after death. \"The desire for the\nsoul's salvation,\" Hermann continues, \"must at last have led men to the\nknowledge and understanding of the effective doctrine of salvation.\" And\nin his book on the Christian's commerce with God, this eminent Lutheran\ndoctor is continually discoursing upon trust in God, peace of\nconscience, and an assurance of salvation that is not strictly and\nprecisely certainty of everlasting life, but rather certainty of the\nforgiveness of sins.\n\nAnd I have read in a Protestant theologian, Ernst Troeltsch, that in the\nconceptual order Protestantism has attained its highest reach in music,\nin which art Bach has given it its mightiest artistic expression. This,\nthen, is what Protestantism dissolves into--celestial music![19] On the\nother hand we may say that the highest artistic expression of\nCatholicism, or at least of Spanish Catholicism, is in the art that is\nmost material, tangible, and permanent--for the vehicle of sounds is\nair--in sculpture and painting, in the Christ of Velasquez, that Christ\nwho is for ever dying, yet never finishes dying, in order that he may\ngive us life.\n\nAnd yet Catholicism does not abandon ethics. No! No modern religion can\nleave ethics on one side. But our religion--although its doctors may\nprotest against this--is fundamentally and for the most part a\ncompromise between eschatology and ethics; it is eschatology pressed\ninto the service of ethics. What else but this is that atrocity of the\neternal pains of hell, which agrees so ill with the Pauline\napocatastasis? Let us bear in mind those words which the _Theologica\nGermanica_, the manual of mysticism that Luther read, puts into the\nmouth of God: \"If I must recompense your evil, I must recompense it with\ngood, for I am and have none other.\" And Christ said: \"Father, forgive\nthem, for they know not what they do,\" and there is no man who perhaps\nknows what he does. But it has been necessary, for the benefit of the\nsocial order, to convert religion into a kind of police system, and\nhence hell. Oriental or Greek Christianity is predominantly\neschatological, Protestantism predominantly ethical, and Catholicism is\na compromise between the two, although with the eschatological element\npreponderating. The most authentic Catholic ethic, monastic asceticism,\nis an ethic of eschatology, directed to the salvation of the individual\nsoul rather than to the maintenance of society. And in the cult of\nvirginity may there not perhaps be a certain obscure idea that to\nperpetuate ourselves in others hinders our own personal perpetuation?\nThe ascetic morality is a negative morality. And, strictly, what is\nimportant for a man is not to die, whether he sins or not. It is not\nnecessary to take very literally, but as a lyrical, or rather\nrhetorical, effusion, the words of our famous sonnet--\n\n    _No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte\n    el cielo que me tienes prometido,_[20]\n\nand the rest that follows.\n\nThe real sin--perhaps it is the sin against the Holy Ghost for which\nthere is no remission--is the sin of heresy, the sin of thinking for\noneself. The saying has been heard before now, here in Spain, that to be\na liberal--that is, a heretic--is worse than being an assassin, a thief,\nor an adulterer. The gravest sin is not to obey the Church, whose\ninfallibility protects us from reason.\n\nAnd why be scandalized by the infallibility of a man, of the Pope? What\ndifference does it make whether it be a book that is infallible--the\nBible, or a society of men--the Church, or a single man? Does it make\nany essential change in the rational difficulty? And since the\ninfallibility of a book or of a society of men is not more rational than\nthat of a single man, this supreme offence in the eyes of reason had to\nbe posited.\n\nIt is the vital asserting itself, and in order to assert itself it\ncreates, with the help of its enemy, the rational, a complete dogmatic\nstructure, and this the Church defends against rationalism, against\nProtestantism, and against Modernism. The Church defends life. It stood\nup against Galileo, and it did right; for his discovery, in its\ninception and until it became assimilated to the general body of human\nknowledge, tended to shatter the anthropomorphic belief that the\nuniverse was created for man. It opposed Darwin, and it did right, for\nDarwinism tends to shatter our belief that man is an exceptional animal,\ncreated expressly to be eternalized. And lastly, Pius IX., the first\nPontiff to be proclaimed infallible, declared that he was irreconcilable\nwith the so-called modern civilization. And he did right.\n\nLoisy, the Catholic ex-abb\u00e9, said: \"I say simply this, that the Church\nand theology have not looked with favour upon the scientific movement,\nand that on certain decisive occasions, so far as it lay in their power,\nthey have hindered it. I say, above all, that Catholic teaching has not\nassociated itself with, or accommodated itself to, this movement.\nTheology has conducted itself, and conducts itself still, as if it were\nself-possessed of a science of nature and a science of history,\ntogether with that general philosophy of nature and history which\nresults from a scientific knowledge of them. It might be supposed that\nthe domain of theology and that of science, distinct in principle and\neven as defined by the Vatican Council, must not be distinct in\npractice. Everything proceeds almost as if theology had nothing to learn\nfrom modern science, natural or historical, and as if by itself it had\nthe power and the right to exercise a direct and absolute control over\nall the activities of the human mind\" (_Autour d'un Petit Livre_, 1903,\np. 211).\n\nAnd such must needs be, and such in fact is, the Church's attitude in\nits struggle with Modernism, of which Loisy was the learned and leading\nexponent.\n\nThe recent struggle against Kantian and fideist Modernism is a struggle\nfor life. Is it indeed possible for life, life that seeks assurance of\nsurvival, to tolerate that a Loisy, a Catholic priest, should affirm\nthat the resurrection of the Saviour is not a fact of the historical\norder, demonstrable and demonstrated by the testimony of history alone?\nRead, moreover, the exposition of the central dogma, that of the\nresurrection of Jesus, in E. Le Roy's excellent work, _Dogme et\nCritique_, and tell me if any solid ground is left for our hope to build\non. Do not the Modernists see that the question at issue is not so much\nthat of the immortal life of Christ, reduced, perhaps, to a life in the\ncollective Christian consciousness, as that of a guarantee of our own\npersonal resurrection of body as well as soul? This new psychological\napologetic appeals to the moral miracle, and we, like the Jews, seek for\na sign, something that can be taken hold of with all the powers of the\nsoul and with all the senses of the body. And with the hands and the\nfeet and the mouth, if it be possible.\n\nBut alas! we do not get it. Reason attacks, and faith, which does not\nfeel itself secure without reason, has to come to terms with it. And\nhence come those tragic contradictions and lacerations of\nconsciousness. We need security, certainty, signs, and they give us\n_motiva credibilitatis_--motives of credibility--upon which to establish\nthe _rationale obsequium_, and although faith precedes reason (_fides\npr\u00e6cedit rationem_), according to St. Augustine, this same learned\ndoctor and bishop sought to travel by faith to understanding (_per fidem\nad intellectum_), and to believe in order to understand (_credo ut\nintelligam_). How far is this from that superb expression of\nTertullian--_et sepultus resurrexit, certum est quia impossibile\nest!_--\"and he was buried and rose again; it is certain because it is\nimpossible!\" and his sublime _credo quia absurdum!_--the scandal of the\nrationalists. How far from the _il faut s'ab\u00eatir_ of Pascal and from the\n\"human reason loves the absurd\" of our Donoso Cort\u00e9s, which he must have\nlearned from the great Joseph de Maistre!\n\nAnd a first foundation-stone was sought in the authority of tradition\nand the revelation of the word of God, and the principle of unanimous\nconsent was arrived at. _Quod apud multos unum invenitur, non est\nerratum, sed traditum_, said Tertullian; and Lamennais added, centuries\nlater, that \"certitude, the principle of life and intelligence ... is,\nif I may be allowed the expression, a social product.\"[21] But here, as\nin so many cases, the supreme formula was given by that great Catholic,\nwhose Catholicism was of the popular and vital order, Count Joseph de\nMaistre, when he wrote: \"I do not believe that it is possible to show a\nsingle opinion of universal utility that is not true.\"[22] Here you have\nthe Catholic hall-mark--the deduction of the truth of a principle from\nits supreme goodness or utility. And what is there of greater, of more\nsovereign utility, than the immortality of the soul? \"As all is\nuncertain, either we must believe all men or none,\" said Lactantius; but\nthat great mystic and ascetic, Blessed Heinrich Seuse, the Dominican,\nimplored the Eternal Wisdom for one word affirming that He was love, and\nwhen the answer came, \"All creatures proclaim that I am love,\" Seuse\nreplied, \"Alas! Lord, that does not suffice for a yearning soul.\" Faith\nfeels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition,\nnor with authority. It seeks the support of its enemy, reason.\n\nAnd thus scholastic theology was devised, and with it its\nhandmaiden--_ancilla theologi\u00e6_--scholastic philosophy, and this\nhandmaiden turned against her mistress. Scholasticism, a magnificent\ncathedral, in which all the problems of architectonic mechanism were\nresolved for future ages, but a cathedral constructed of unbaked bricks,\ngave place little by little to what is called natural theology and is\nmerely Christianity depotentialized. The attempt was even made, where it\nwas possible, to base dogmas upon reason, to show at least that if they\nwere indeed super-rational they were not contra-rational, and they were\nreinforced with a philosophical foundation of Aristotelian-Neoplatonic\nthirteenth-century philosophy. And such is the Thomism recommended by\nLeo XIII. And now the question is not one of the enforcement of dogma\nbut of its philosophical, medieval, and Thomist interpretation. It is\nnot enough to believe that in receiving the consecrated Host we receive\nthe body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; we must needs negotiate all\nthose difficulties of transubstantiation and substance separated from\naccidents, and so break with the whole of the modern rational conception\nof substantiality.\n\nBut for this, implicit faith suffices--the faith of the coalheaver,[23]\nthe faith of those who, like St. Teresa (_Vida_, cap. xxv. 2), do not\nwish to avail themselves of theology. \"Do not ask me the reason of\nthat, for I am ignorant; Holy Mother Church possesses doctors who will\nknow how to answer you,\" as we were made to learn in the Catechism. It\nwas for this, among other things, that the priesthood was instituted,\nthat the teaching Church might be the depositary--\"reservoir instead of\nriver,\" as Phillips Brooks said--of theological secrets. \"The work of\nthe Nicene Creed,\" says Harnack (_Dogmengeschichte_, ii. 1, cap. vii.\n3), \"was a victory of the priesthood over the faith of the Christian\npeople. The doctrine of the Logos had already become unintelligible to\nthose who were not theologians. The setting up of the Niceno-Cappadocian\nformula as the fundamental confession of the Church made it perfectly\nimpossible for the Catholic laity to get an inner comprehension of the\nChristian Faith, taking as their guide the form in which it was\npresented in the doctrine of the Church. The idea became more and more\ndeeply implanted in men's minds that Christianity was the revelation of\nthe unintelligible.\" And so, in truth, it is.\n\nAnd why was this? Because faith--that is, Life--no longer felt sure of\nitself. Neither traditionalism nor the theological positivism of Duns\nScotus sufficed for it; it sought to rationalize itself. And it sought\nto establish its foundation--not, indeed, over against reason, where it\nreally is, but upon reason--that is to say, within reason--itself. The\nnominalist or positivist or voluntarist position of Scotus--that which\nmaintains that law and truth depend, not so much upon the essence as\nupon the free and inscrutable will of God--by accentuating its supreme\nirrationality, placed religion in danger among the majority of believers\nendowed with mature reason and not mere coalheavers. Hence the triumph\nof the Thomist theological rationalism. It is no longer enough to\nbelieve in the existence of God; but the sentence of anathema falls on\nhim who, though believing in it, does not believe that His existence is\ndemonstrable by rational arguments, or who believes that up to the\npresent nobody by means of these rational arguments has ever\ndemonstrated it irrefutably. However, in this connection the remark of\nPohle is perhaps capable of application: \"If eternal salvation depended\nupon mathematical axioms, we should have to expect that the most odious\nhuman sophistry would attack their universal validity as violently as it\nnow attacks God, the soul, and Christ.\"[24]\n\nThe truth is, Catholicism oscillates between mysticism, which is the\ninward experience of the living God in Christ, an intransmittible\nexperience, the danger of which, however, is that it absorbs our own\npersonality in God, and so does not save our vital longing--between\nmysticism and the rationalism which it fights against (see Weizs\u00e4cker,\n_op. cit._); it oscillates between religionized science and\nscientificized religion. The apocalyptic enthusiasm changed little by\nlittle into neo-platonic mysticism, which theology thrust further into\nthe background. It feared the excesses of the imagination which was\nsupplanting faith and creating gnostic extravagances. But it had to sign\na kind of pact with gnosticism and another with rationalism; neither\nimagination nor reason allowed itself to be completely vanquished. And\nthus the body of Catholic dogma became a system of contradictions, more\nor less successfully harmonized. The Trinity was a kind of pact between\nmonotheism and polytheism, and humanity and divinity sealed a peace in\nChrist, nature covenanted with grace, grace with free will, free will\nwith the Divine prescience, and so on. And it is perhaps true, as\nHermann says (_loc. cit._), that \"as soon as we develop religious\nthought to its logical conclusions, it enters into conflict with other\nideas which belong equally to the life of religion.\" And this it is that\ngives to Catholicism its profound vital dialectic. But at what a cost?\n\nAt the cost, it must needs be said, of doing violence to the mental\nexigencies of those believers in possession of an adult reason. It\ndemands from them that they shall believe all or nothing, that they\nshall accept the complete totality of dogma or that they shall forfeit\nall merit if the least part of it be rejected. And hence the result, as\nthe great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out,[25] that in France\nand Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Popery\nto absolute atheism, because \"the fact is, that false and absurd\ndoctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget scepticism in\nthose who received them without reflection. None are so likely to\nbelieve too little as those who have begun by believing too much.\" Here\nis, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! the\nterrible danger comes from another quarter--from seeking to believe with\nthe reason and not with life.\n\nThe Catholic solution of our problem, of our unique vital problem, the\nproblem of the immortality and eternal salvation of the individual soul,\nsatisfies the will, and therefore satisfies life; but the attempt to\nrationalize it by means of dogmatic theology fails to satisfy the\nreason. And reason has its exigencies as imperious as those of life. It\nis no use seeking to force ourselves to consider as super-rational what\nclearly appears to us to be contra-rational, neither is it any good\nwishing to become coalheavers when we are not coalheavers.\nInfallibility, a notion of Hellenic origin, is in its essence a\nrationalistic category.\n\nLet us now consider the rationalist or scientific solution--or, more\nproperly, dissolution--of our problem.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[13] Erwin Rohde, _Psyche_, \"Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der\nGriechen.\" T\u00fcbingen, 1907. Up to the present this is the leading work\ndealing with the belief of the Greeks in the immortality of the soul.\n\n[14] Gal. ii. 20.\n\n[15] On all relating to this question see, among others, Harnack,\n_Dogmengeschichte_, ii., Teil i., Buch vii., cap. i.\n\n[16]\n\n    Though we are become dust,\n    In thee, O Lord, our hope confides,\n    That we shall live again clad\n    In the flesh and skin that once covered us.\n\n[17] _Libra de la Conversi\u00f3n de la Magdelena_, part iv., chap. ix.\n\n[18] In his exposition of Protestant dogma in _Systematische christliche\nReligion_, Berlin, 1909, one of the series entitled _Die Kultur der\nGegenwart_, published by P. Hinneberg.\n\n[19] The common use of the expression _m\u00fasica celestial_ to denote\n\"nonsense, something not worth listening to,\" lends it a satirical\nbyplay which disappears in the English rendering.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[20] It is not Thy promised heaven, my God, that moves me to love Thee.\n(Anonymous, sixteenth or seventeenth century. See _Oxford Book of\nSpanish Verse_, No. 106.)\n\n[21] _Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rence en mati\u00e8re de religion_, part iii., chap.\ni.\n\n[22] _Les Soir\u00e9es de Saint-P\u00e9tersbourg_, x^{me} entretien.\n\n[23] The allusion is to the traditional story of the coalheaver whom the\ndevil sought to convince of the irrationality of belief in the Trinity.\nThe coalheaver took the cloak that he was wearing and folded it in three\nfolds. \"Here are three folds,\" he said, \"and the cloak though threefold\nis yet one.\" And the devil departed baffled.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[24] Joseph Pohle, \"Christlich Katolische Dogmatik,\" in _Systematische\nChristliche Religion_, Berlin, 1909. _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_ series.\n\n[25] \"Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered,\" 1816, in _The\nComplete Works of William Ellery Channing, D.D._, London, 1884.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION\n\n\nThe great master of rationalist phenomenalism, David Hume, begins his\nessay \"On the Immortality of the Soul\" with these decisive words: \"It\nappears difficult by the mere light of reason to prove the immortality\nof the soul. The arguments in favour of it are commonly derived from\nmetaphysical, moral, or physical considerations. But it is really the\nGospel, and only the Gospel, that has brought to light life and\nimmortality.\" Which is equivalent to denying the rationality of the\nbelief that the soul of each one of us is immortal.\n\nKant, whose criticism found its point of departure in Hume, attempted to\nestablish the rationality of this longing for immortality and the belief\nthat it imports; and this is the real origin, the inward origin, of his\n_Critique of Practical Reason_, and of his categorical imperative and of\nhis God. But in spite of all this, the sceptical affirmation of Hume\nholds good. There is no way of proving the immortality of the soul\nrationally. There are, on the other hand, ways of proving rationally its\nmortality.\n\nIt would be not merely superfluous but ridiculous to enlarge here upon\nthe extent to which the individual human consciousness is dependent upon\nthe physical organism, pointing out how it comes to birth by slow\ndegrees according as the brain receives impressions from the outside\nworld, how it is temporarily suspended during sleep, swoons, and other\naccidents, and how everything leads us to the rational conjecture that\ndeath carries with it the loss of consciousness. And just as before our\nbirth we were not, nor have we any personal pre-natal memory, so after\nour death we shall cease to be. This is the rational position.\n\nThe designation \"soul\" is merely a term used to denote the individual\nconsciousness in its integrity and continuity; and that this soul\nundergoes change, that in like manner as it is integrated so it is\ndisintegrated, is a thing very evident. For Aristotle it was the\nsubstantial form of the body--the entelechy, but not a substance. And\nmore than one modern has called it an epiphenomenon--an absurd term. The\nappellation phenomenon suffices.\n\nRationalism--and by rationalism I mean the doctrine that abides solely\nby reason, by objective truth--is necessarily materialist. And let not\nidealists be scandalized thereby.\n\nThe truth is--it is necessary to be perfectly explicit in this\nmatter--that what we call materialism means for us nothing else but the\ndoctrine which denies the immortality of the individual soul, the\npersistence of personal consciousness after death.\n\nIn another sense it may be said that, as we know what matter is no more\nthan we know what spirit is, and as matter is for us merely an idea,\nmaterialism is idealism. In fact, and as regards our problem--the most\nvital, the only really vital problem--it is all the same to say that\neverything is matter as to say that everything is idea, or that\neverything is energy, or whatever you please. Every monist system will\nalways seem to us materialist. The immortality of the soul is saved only\nby the dualist systems--those which teach that human consciousness is\nsomething substantially distinct and different from the other\nmanifestations of phenomena. And reason is naturally monist. For it is\nthe function of reason to understand and explain the universe, and in\norder to understand and explain it, it is in no way necessary for the\nsoul to be an imperishable substance. For the purpose of explaining and\nunderstanding our psychic life, for psychology, the hypothesis of the\nsoul is unnecessary. What was formerly called rational psychology, in\nopposition to empirical psychology, is not psychology but metaphysics,\nand very muddy metaphysics; neither is it rational, but profoundly\nirrational, or rather contra-rational.\n\nThe pretended rational doctrine of the substantiality and spirituality\nof the soul, with all the apparatus that accompanies it, is born simply\nof the necessity which men feel of grounding upon reason their\ninexpugnable longing for immortality and the subsequent belief in it.\nAll the sophistries which aim at proving that the soul is substance,\nsimple and incorruptible, proceed from this source. And further, the\nvery concept of substance, as it was fixed and defined by scholasticism,\na concept which does not bear criticism, is a theological concept,\ndesigned expressly to sustain faith in the immortality of the soul.\n\nWilliam James, in the third of the lectures which he devoted to\npragmatism in the Lowell Institute in Boston, in December, 1906, and\nJanuary, 1907[26]--the weakest thing in all the work of the famous\nAmerican thinker, an extremely weak thing indeed--speaks as follows:\n\"Scholasticism has taken the notion of substance from common sense and\nmade it very technical and articulate. Few things would seem to have\nfewer pragmatic consequences for us than substances, cut off as we are\nfrom every contact with them. Yet in one case scholasticism has proved\nthe importance of the substance-idea by treating it pragmatically. I\nrefer to certain disputes about the mystery of the Eucharist. Substance\nhere would appear to have momentous pragmatic value. Since the accidents\nof the wafer do not change in the Lord's Supper, and yet it has become\nthe very body of Christ, it must be that the change is in the substance\nsolely. The bread-substance must have been withdrawn and the Divine\nsubstance substituted miraculously without altering the immediate\nsensible properties. But though these do not alter, a tremendous\ndifference has been made--no less a one than this, that we who take the\nsacrament now feed upon the very substance of Divinity. The\nsubstance-notion breaks into life, with tremendous effect, if once you\nallow that substances can separate from their accidents and exchange\nthese latter. This is the only pragmatic application of the\nsubstance-idea with which I am acquainted; and it is obvious that it\nwill only be treated seriously by those who already believe in the 'real\npresence' on independent grounds.\"\n\nNow, leaving on one side the question as to whether it is good\ntheology--and I do not say good reasoning because all this lies outside\nthe sphere of reason--to confound the substance of the body--the body,\nnot the soul--of Christ with the very substance of Divinity--that is to\nsay, with God Himself--it would appear impossible that one so ardently\ndesirous of the immortality of the soul as William James, a man whose\nwhole philosophy aims simply at establishing this belief on rational\ngrounds, should not have perceived that the pragmatic application of the\nconcept of substance to the doctrine of the Eucharistic\ntransubstantiation is merely a consequence of its anterior application\nto the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. As I explained in the\npreceding chapter, the Sacrament of the Eucharist is simply the\nreflection of the belief in immortality; it is, for the believer, the\nproof, by a mystical experience, that the soul is immortal and will\nenjoy God eternally. And the concept of substance was born, above all\nand before all, of the concept of the substantiality of the soul, and\nthe latter was affirmed in order to confirm faith in the persistence of\nthe soul after its separation from the body. Such was at the same time\nits first pragmatic application and its origin. And subsequently we\nhave transferred this concept to external things. It is because I feel\nmyself to be substance--that is to say, permanent in the midst of my\nchanges--that I attribute substantiality to those agents exterior to me,\nwhich are also permanent in the midst of their changes--just as the\nconcept of force is born of my sensation of personal effort in putting a\nthing in motion.\n\nRead carefully in the first part of the _Summa Theologica_ of St. Thomas\nAquinas the first six articles of question lxxv., which discuss whether\nthe human soul is body, whether it is something self-subsistent, whether\nsuch also is the soul of the lower animals, whether the soul is the man,\nwhether the soul is composed of matter and form, and whether it is\nincorruptible, and then say if all this is not subtly intended to\nsupport the belief that this incorruptible substantiality of the soul\nrenders it capable of receiving from God immortality, for it is clear\nthat as He created it when He implanted it in the body, as St. Thomas\nsays, so at its separation from the body He could annihilate it. And as\nthe criticism of these proofs has been undertaken a hundred times, it is\nunnecessary to repeat it here.\n\nIs it possible for the unforewarned reason to conclude that our soul is\na substance from the fact that our consciousness of our identity--and\nthis within very narrow and variable limits--persists through all the\nchanges of our body? We might as well say of a ship that put out to sea\nand lost first one piece of timber, which was replaced by another of the\nsame shape and dimensions, then lost another, and so on with all her\ntimbers, and finally returned to port the same ship, with the same\nbuild, the same sea-going qualities, recognizable by everybody as the\nsame--we might as well say of such a ship that it had a substantial\nsoul. Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to infer the simplicity\nof the soul from the fact that we have to judge and unify our thoughts?\nThought is not one but complex, and for the reason the soul is nothing\nbut the succession of co-ordinated states of consciousness.\n\nIn books of psychology written from the spiritualist point of view, it\nis customary to begin the discussion of the existence of the soul as a\nsimple substance, separable from the body, after this style: There is in\nme a principle which thinks, wills, and feels.... Now this implies a\nbegging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truth\nthat there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that I\nthink, will, and feel. And I--the I that thinks, wills, and feels--am\nimmediately my living body with the states of consciousness which it\nsustains. It is my living body that thinks, wills, and feels. How? How\nyou please.\n\nAnd they proceed to seek to establish the substantiality of the soul,\nhypostatizing the states of consciousness, and they begin by saying that\nthis substance must be simple--that is, by opposing thought to\nextension, after the manner of the Cartesian dualism. And as Balmes was\none of the spiritualist writers who have given the clearest and most\nconcise form to the argument, I will present it as he expounds it in the\nsecond chapter of his _Curso de Filosofia Elemental_. \"The human soul is\nsimple,\" he says, and adds: \"Simplicity consists in the absence of\nparts, and the soul has none. Let us suppose that it has three parts--A,\nB, C. I ask, Where, then, does thought reside? If in A only, then B and\nC are superfluous; and consequently the simple subject A will be the\nsoul. If thought resides in A, B, and C, it follows that thought is\ndivided into parts, which is absurd. What sort of a thing is a\nperception, a comparison, a judgement, a ratiocination, distributed\namong three subjects?\" A more obvious begging of the question cannot be\nconceived. Balmes begins by taking it for granted that the whole, as a\nwhole, is incapable of making a judgement. He continues: \"The unity of\nconsciousness is opposed to the division of the soul. When we think,\nthere is a subject which knows everything that it thinks, and this is\nimpossible if parts be attributed to it. Of the thought that is in A, B\nand C will know nothing, and so in the other cases respectively. There\nwill not, therefore, be _one_ consciousness of the whole thought: each\npart will have its special consciousness, and there will be within us as\nmany thinking beings as there are parts.\" The begging of the question\ncontinues; it is assumed without any proof that a whole, as a whole,\ncannot perceive as a unit. Balmes then proceeds to ask if these parts A,\nB, and C are simple or compound, and repeats his argument until he\narrives at the conclusion that the thinking subject must be a part which\nis not a whole--that is, simple. The argument is based, as will be seen,\nupon the unity of apperception and of judgement. Subsequently he\nendeavours to refute the hypothesis of a communication of the parts\namong themselves.\n\nBalmes--and with him the _a priori_ spiritualists who seek to\nrationalize faith in the immortality of the soul--ignore the only\nrational explanation, which is that apperception and judgement are a\nresultant, that perceptions or ideas themselves are components which\nagree. They begin by supposing something external to and distinct from\nthe states of consciousness, something that is not the living body which\nsupports these states, something that is not I but is within me.\n\nThe soul is simple, others say, because it reflects upon itself as a\ncomplete whole. No; the state of consciousness A, in which I think of my\nprevious state of consciousness B, is not the same as its predecessor.\nOr if I think of my soul, I think of an idea distinct from the act by\nwhich I think of it. To think that one thinks and nothing more, is not\nto think.\n\nThe soul is the principle of life, it is said. Yes; and similarly the\ncategory of force or energy has been conceived as the principle of\nmovement. But these are concepts, not phenomena, not external realities.\nDoes the principle of movement move? And only that which moves has\nexternal reality. Does the principle of life live? Hume was right when\nhe said that he never encountered this idea of himself--that he only\nobserved himself desiring or performing or feeling something.[27] The\nidea of some individual thing--of this inkstand in front of me, of that\nhorse standing at my gate, of these two and not of any other individuals\nof the same class--is the fact, the phenomenon itself. The idea of\nmyself is myself.\n\nAll the efforts to substantiate consciousness, making it independent of\nextension--remember that Descartes opposed thought to extension--are but\nsophistical subtilties intended to establish the rationality of faith in\nthe immortality of the soul. It is sought to give the value of objective\nreality to that which does not possess it--to that whose reality exists\nonly in thought. And the immortality that we crave is a phenomenal\nimmortality--it is the continuation of this present life.\n\nThe unity of consciousness is for scientific psychology--the only\nrational psychology--simply a phenomenal unity. No one can say what a\nsubstantial unity is. And, what is more, no one can say what a substance\nis. For the notion of substance is a non-phenomenal category. It is a\nnoumenon and belongs properly to the unknowable--that is to say,\naccording to the sense in which it is understood. But in its\ntranscendental sense it is something really unknowable and strictly\nirrational. It is precisely this concept of substance that an\nunforewarned mind reduces to a use that is very far from that pragmatic\napplication to which William James referred.\n\nAnd this application is not saved by understanding it in an idealistic\nsense, according to the Berkeleyan principle that to be is to be\nperceived (_esse est percipi_). To say that everything is idea or that\neverything is spirit, is the same as saying that everything is matter or\nthat everything is energy, for if everything is idea or everything\nspirit, and if, therefore, this diamond is idea or spirit, just as my\nconsciousness is, it is not plain why the diamond should not endure for\never, if my consciousness, because it is idea or spirit, endures for\never.\n\nGeorge Berkeley, Anglican Bishop of Cloyne and brother in spirit to the\nAnglican bishop Joseph Butler, was equally as anxious to save the belief\nin the immortality of the soul. In the first words of the Preface to his\n_Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, he tells us\nthat he considers that this treatise will be useful, \"particularly to\nthose who are tainted with scepticism, or want a demonstration of the\nexistence and immateriality of God, or the natural immortality of the\nsoul.\" In paragraph cxl. he lays it down that we have an idea, or rather\na notion, of spirit, and that we know other spirits by means of our own,\nfrom which follows--so in the next paragraph he roundly affirms--the\nnatural immortality of the soul. And here he enters upon a series of\nconfusions arising from the ambiguity with which he invests the term\nnotion. And after having established the immortality of the soul, almost\nas it were _per saltum_, on the ground that the soul is not passive like\nthe body, he proceeds to tell us in paragraph cxlvii. that the existence\nof God is more evident than that of man. And yet, in spite of this,\nthere are still some who are doubtful!\n\nThe question was complicated by making consciousness a property of the\nsoul, consciousness being something more than soul--that is to say, a\nsubstantial form of the body, the originator of all the organic\nfunctions of the body. The soul not only thinks, feels, and wills, but\nmoves the body and prompts its vital functions; in the human soul are\nunited the vegetative, animal, and rational functions. Such is the\ntheory. But the soul separated from the body can have neither\nvegetative nor animal functions.\n\nA theory, in short, which for the reason is a veritable contexture of\nconfusions.\n\nAfter the Renaissance and the restoration of purely rational thought,\nemancipated from all theology, the doctrine of the mortality of the soul\nwas re-established by the newly published writings of the second-century\nphilosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias and by Pietro Pomponazzi and\nothers. And in point of fact, little or nothing can be added to what\nPomponazzi has written in his _Tractatus de immortalitate anim\u00e6_. It is\nreason itself, and it serves nothing to reiterate his arguments.\n\nAttempts have not been wanting, however, to find an empirical support\nfor belief in the immortality of the soul, and among these may be\ncounted the work of Frederic W.H. Myers on _Human Personality and its\nSurvival of Bodily Death_. No one ever approached more eagerly than\nmyself the two thick volumes of this work in which the leading spirit of\nthe Society for Psychical Research resumed that formidable mass of data\nrelating to presentiments, apparitions of the dead, the phenomena of\ndreams, telepathy, hypnotism, sensorial automatism, ecstasy, and all the\nrest that goes to furnish the spiritualist arsenal. I entered upon the\nreading of it not only without that temper of cautious suspicion which\nmen of science maintain in investigations of this character, but even\nwith a predisposition in its favour, as one who comes to seek the\nconfirmation of his innermost longings; but for this reason was my\ndisillusion all the greater. In spite of its critical apparatus it does\nnot differ in any respect from medieval miracle-mongering. There is a\nfundamental defect of method, of logic.\n\nAnd if the belief in the immortality of the soul has been unable to find\nvindication in rational empiricism, neither is it satisfied with\npantheism. To say that everything is God, and that when we die we return\nto God, or, more accurately, continue in Him, avails our longing\nnothing; for if this indeed be so, then we were in God before we were\nborn, and if when we die we return to where we were before being born,\nthen the human soul, the individual consciousness, is perishable. And\nsince we know very well that God, the personal and conscious God of\nChristian monotheism, is simply the provider, and above all the\nguarantor, of our immortality, pantheism is said, and rightly said, to\nbe merely atheism disguised; and, in my opinion, undisguised. And they\nwere right in calling Spinoza an atheist, for his is the most logical,\nthe most rational, system of pantheism.\n\nNeither is the longing for immortality saved, but rather dissolved and\nsubmerged, by agnosticism, or the doctrine of the unknowable, which,\nwhen it has professed to wish to leave religious feelings scathless, has\nalways been inspired by the most refined hypocrisy. The whole of the\nfirst part of Spencer's _First Principles_, and especially the fifth\nchapter entitled \"Reconciliation\"--that between reason and faith or\nscience and religion being understood--is a model at the same time of\nphilosophical superficiality and religious insincerity, of the most\nrefined British cant. The unknowable, if it is something more than the\nmerely hitherto unknown, is but a purely negative concept, a concept of\nlimitation. And upon this foundation no human feeling can be built up.\n\nThe science of religion, on the other hand, of religion considered as an\nindividual and social psychic phenomenon irrespective of the\ntranscendental objective validity of religious affirmations, is a\nscience which, in explaining the origin of the belief that the soul is\nsomething that can live disjoined from the body, has destroyed the\nrationality of this belief. However much the religious man may repeat\nwith Schleiermacher, \"Science can teach thee nothing; it is for science\nto learn from thee,\" inwardly he thinks otherwise.\n\nFrom whatever side the matter is regarded, it is always found that\nreason confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradicts\nit. And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy of\nlife.\n\nA terrible thing is intelligence. It tends to death as memory tends to\nstability. The living, the absolutely unstable, the absolutely\nindividual, is, strictly, unintelligible. Logic tends to reduce\neverything to identities and genera, to each representation having no\nmore than one single and self-same content in whatever place, time, or\nrelation it may occur to us. And there is nothing that remains the same\nfor two successive moments of its existence. My idea of God is different\neach time that I conceive it. Identity, which is death, is the goal of\nthe intellect. The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes\nit; it seeks to congeal the flowing stream in blocks of ice; it seeks to\narrest it. In order to analyze a body it is necessary to extenuate or\ndestroy it. In order to understand anything it is necessary to kill it,\nto lay it out rigid in the mind. Science is a cemetery of dead ideas,\neven though life may issue from them. Worms also feed upon corpses. My\nown thoughts, tumultuous and agitated in the innermost recesses of my\nsoul, once they are torn from their roots in the heart, poured out on to\nthis paper and there fixed in unalterable shape, are already only the\ncorpses of thoughts. How, then, shall reason open its portals to the\nrevelation of life? It is a tragic combat--it is the very essence of\ntragedy--this combat of life with reason. And truth? Is truth something\nthat is lived or that is comprehended?\n\nIt is only necessary to read the terrible _Parmenides_ of Plato to\narrive at his tragic conclusion that \"the one is and is not, and both\nitself and others, in relation to themselves and one another, are and\nare not, and appear to be and appear not to be.\" All that is vital is\nirrational, and all that is rational is anti-vital, for reason is\nessentially sceptical.\n\nThe rational, in effect, is simply the relational; reason is limited to\nrelating irrational elements. Mathematics is the only perfect science,\ninasmuch as it adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides numbers, but not\nreal and substantial things, inasmuch as it is the most formal of the\nsciences. Who can extract the cube root of an ash-tree?\n\nNevertheless we need logic, this terrible power, in order to communicate\nthoughts and perceptions and even in order to think and perceive, for we\nthink with words, we perceive with forms. To think is to converse with\noneself; and speech is social, and social are thought and logic. But may\nthey not perhaps possess a content, an individual matter, incommunicable\nand untranslatable? And may not this be the source of their power?\n\nThe truth is that man, the prisoner of logic, without which he cannot\nthink, has always sought to make logic subservient to his desires, and\nprincipally to his fundamental desire. He has always sought to hold fast\nto logic, and especially in the Middle Ages, in the interests of\ntheology and jurisprudence, both of which based themselves on what was\nestablished by authority. It was not until very much later that logic\npropounded the problem of knowledge, the problem of its own validity,\nthe scrutiny of the metalogical foundations.\n\n\"The Western theology,\" Dean Stanley wrote, \"is essentially logical in\nform and based on law. The Eastern theology is rhetorical in form and\nbased on philosophy. The Latin divine succeeded to the Roman advocate.\nThe Oriental divine succeeded to the Grecian sophist.\"[28]\n\nAnd all the laboured arguments in support of our hunger of immortality,\nwhich pretend to be grounded on reason or logic, are merely advocacy and\nsophistry.\n\nThe property and characteristic of advocacy is, in effect, to make use\nof logic in the interests of a thesis that is to be defended, while, on\nthe other hand, the strictly scientific method proceeds from the facts,\nthe data, presented to us by reality, in order that it may arrive, or\nnot arrive, as the case may be, at a certain conclusion. What is\nimportant is to define the problem clearly, whence it follows that\nprogress consists not seldom in undoing what has been done. Advocacy\nalways supposes a _petitio principii_, and its arguments are _ad\nprobandum_. And theology that pretends to be rational is nothing but\nadvocacy.\n\nTheology proceeds from dogma, and dogma, _dogma_, in its\nprimitive and most direct sense, signifies a decree, something akin to\nthe Latin _placitum_, that which has seemed to the legislative authority\nfitting to be law. This juridical concept is the starting-point of\ntheology. For the theologian, as for the advocate, dogma, law, is\nsomething given--a starting-point which admits of discussion only in\nrespect of its application and its most exact interpretation. Hence it\nfollows that the theological or advocatory spirit is in its principle\ndogmatical, while the strictly scientific and purely rational spirit is\nsceptical, _skeptikos_--that is, investigative. It is so at least\nin its principle, for there is the other sense of the term scepticism,\nthat which is most usual to-day, that of a system of doubt, suspicion,\nand uncertainty, and this has arisen from the theological or advocatory\nuse of reason, from the abuse of dogmatism. The endeavour to apply the\nlaw of authority, the _placitum_, the dogma, to different and sometimes\ncontraposed practical necessities, is what has engendered the scepticism\nof doubt. It is advocacy, or what amounts to the same thing, theology,\nthat teaches the distrust of reason--not true science, not the science\nof investigation, sceptical in the primitive and direct meaning of the\nword, which hastens towards no predetermined solution nor proceeds save\nby the testing of hypotheses.\n\nTake the _Summa Theologica_ of St. Thomas, the classical monument of the\ntheology--that is, of the advocacy--of Catholicism, and open it where\nyou please. First comes the thesis--_utrum_ ... whether such a thing be\nthus or otherwise; then the objections--_ad primum sic proceditur_; next\nthe answers to these objections--_sed contra est_ ... or _respondeo\ndicendum_.... Pure advocacy! And underlying many, perhaps most, of its\narguments you will find a logical fallacy which may be expressed _more\nscholastico_ by this syllogism: I do not understand this fact save by\ngiving it this explanation; it is thus that I must understand it,\ntherefore this must be its explanation. The alternative being that I am\nleft without any understanding of it at all. True science teaches, above\nall, to doubt and to be ignorant; advocacy neither doubts nor believes\nthat it does not know. It requires a solution.\n\nTo the mentality that assumes, more or less consciously, that we must of\nnecessity find a solution to every problem, belongs the argument based\non the disastrous consequences of a thing. Take any book of\napologetics--that is to say, of theological advocacy--and you will see\nhow many times you will meet with this phrase--\"the disastrous\nconsequences of this doctrine.\" Now the disastrous consequences of a\ndoctrine prove at most that the doctrine is disastrous, but not that it\nis false, for there is no proof that the true is necessarily that which\nsuits us best. The identification of the true and the good is but a\npious wish. In his _\u00c9tudes sur Blaise Pascal_, A. Vinet says: \"Of the\ntwo needs that unceasingly belabour human nature, that of happiness is\nnot only the more universally felt and the more constantly experienced,\nbut it is also the more imperious. And this need is not only of the\nsenses; it is intellectual. It is not only for the _soul_; it is for the\n_mind_ that happiness is a necessity. Happiness forms a part of truth.\"\nThis last proposition--_le bonheur fait partie de la verit\u00e9_--is a\nproposition of pure advocacy, but not of science or of pure reason. It\nwould be better to say that truth forms a part of happiness in a\nTertullianesque sense, in the sense of _credo quia absurdum_, which\nmeans actually _credo quia consolans_--I believe because it is a thing\nconsoling to me.\n\nNo, for reason, truth is that of which it can be proved that it is, that\nit exists, whether it console us or not. And reason is certainly not a\nconsoling faculty. That terrible Latin poet Lucretius, whose apparent\nserenity and Epicurean _ataraxia_ conceal so much despair, said that\npiety consists in the power to contemplate all things with a serene\nsoul--_pacata posse mente omnia tueri_. And it was the same Lucretius\nwho wrote that religion can persuade us into so great evils--_tantum\nreligio potuit suadere malorum_. And it is true that religion--above all\nthe Christian religion--has been, as the Apostle says, to the Jews a\nstumbling-block, and to the intellectuals foolishness.[29] The Christian\nreligion, the religion of the immortality of the soul, was called by\nTacitus a pernicious superstition (_exitialis superstitio_), and he\nasserted that it involved a hatred of mankind (_odium generis humani_).\n\nSpeaking of the age in which these men lived, the most genuinely\nrationalistic age in the world's history, Flaubert, writing to Madame\nRoger des Genettes, uttered these pregnant words: \"You are right; we\nmust speak with respect of Lucretius; I see no one who can compare with\nhim except Byron, and Byron has not his gravity nor the sincerity of his\nsadness. The melancholy of the ancients seems to me more profound than\nthat of the moderns, who all more or less presuppose an immortality on\nthe yonder side of the _black hole_. But for the ancients this black\nhole was the infinite itself; the procession of their dreams is imaged\nagainst a background of immutable ebony. The gods being no more and\nChrist being not yet, there was between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius a\nunique moment in which man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find this\ngrandeur; but what renders Lucretius intolerable is his physics, which\nhe gives as if positive. If he is weak, it is because he did not doubt\nenough; he wished to explain, to arrive at a conclusion!\"[30]\n\nYes, Lucretius wished to arrive at a conclusion, a solution, and, what\nis worse, he wished to find consolation in reason. For there is also an\nanti-theological advocacy, and an _odium anti-theologicum_.\n\nMany, very many, men of science, the majority of those who call\nthemselves rationalists, are afflicted by it.\n\nThe rationalist acts rationally--that is to say, he does not speak out\nof his part--so long as he confines himself to denying that reason\nsatisfies our vital hunger for immortality; but, furious at not being\nable to believe, he soon becomes a prey to the vindictiveness of the\n_odium anti-theologicum_, and exclaims with the Pharisees: \"This people\nwho knoweth not the law are cursed.\" There is much truth in these words\nof Soloviev: \"I have a foreboding of the near approach of a time when\nChristians will gather together again in the Catacombs, because of the\npersecution of the faith--a persecution less brutal, perhaps, than that\nof Nero's day, but not less refined in its severity, consummated by\nmendacity, derision, and all the hypocrisies.\"\n\nThe anti-theological hate, the scientificist--I do not say\nscientific--fury, is manifest. Consider, not the more detached\nscientific investigators, those who know how to doubt, but the fanatics\nof rationalism, and observe with what gross brutality they speak of\nfaith. Vogt considered it probable that the cranial structure of the\nApostles was of a pronounced simian character; of the indecencies of\nHaeckel, that supreme incomprehender, there is no need to speak, nor yet\nof those of B\u00fcchner; even Virchow is not free from them. And others work\nwith more subtilty. There are people who seem not to be content with\nnot believing that there is another life, or rather, with believing that\nthere is none, but who are vexed and hurt that others should believe in\nit or even should wish that it might exist. And this attitude is as\ncontemptible as that is worthy of respect which characterizes those who,\nthough urged by the need they have of it to believe in another life, are\nunable to believe. But of this most noble attitude of the spirit, the\nmost profound, the most human, and the most fruitful, the attitude of\ndespair, we will speak later on.\n\nAnd the rationalists who do not succumb to the anti-theological fury are\nbent on convincing men that there are motives for living and\nconsolations for having been born, even though there shall come a time,\nat the end of some tens or hundreds or millions of centuries, when all\nhuman consciousness shall have ceased to exist. And these motives for\nliving and working, this thing which some call humanism, are the amazing\nproducts of the affective and emotional hollowness of rationalism and of\nits stupendous hypocrisy--a hypocrisy bent on sacrificing sincerity to\nveracity, and sworn not to confess that reason is a dissolvent and\ndisconsolatory power.\n\nMust I repeat again what I have already said about all this business of\nmanufacturing culture, of progressing, of realizing good, truth, and\nbeauty, of establishing justice on earth, of ameliorating life for those\nwho shall come after us, of subserving I know not what destiny, and all\nthis without our taking thought for the ultimate end of each one of us?\nMust I again declare to you the supreme vacuity of culture, of science,\nof art, of good, of truth, of beauty, of justice ... of all these\nbeautiful conceptions, if at the last, in four days or in four millions\nof centuries--it matters not which--no human consciousness shall exist\nto appropriate this civilization, this science, art, good, truth,\nbeauty, justice, and all the rest?\n\nMany and very various have been the rationalist devices--more or less\nrational--by means of which from the days of the Epicureans and the\nStoics it has been sought to discover rational consolation in truth and\nto convince men, although those who sought so to do remained themselves\nunconvinced, that there are motives for working and lures for living,\neven though the human consciousness be destined some day to disappear.\n\nThe Epicurean attitude, the extreme and grossest expression of which is\n\"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,\" or the Horatian _carpe\ndiem_, which may be rendered by \"Live for the day,\" does not differ in\nits essence from the Stoic attitude with its \"Accomplish what the moral\nconscience dictates to thee, and afterward let it be as it may be.\" Both\nattitudes have a common base; and pleasure for pleasure's sake comes to\nthe same as duty for duty's sake.\n\nSpinoza, the most logical and consistent of atheists--I mean of those\nwho deny the persistence of individual consciousness through indefinite\nfuture time--and at the same time the most pious, Spinoza devoted the\nfifth and last part of his _Ethic_ to elucidating the path that leads to\nliberty and to determining the concept of happiness. The concept!\nConcept, not feeling! For Spinoza, who was a terrible intellectualist,\nhappiness (_beatitudo_) is a concept, and the love of God an\nintellectual love. After establishing in proposition xxi. of the fifth\npart that \"the mind can imagine nothing, neither can it remember\nanything that is past, save during the continuance of the body\"--which\nis equivalent to denying the immortality of the soul, since a soul\nwhich, disjoined from the body in which it lived, does not remember its\npast, is neither immortal nor is it a soul--he goes on to affirm in\nproposition xxiii. that \"the human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed\nwith the body, but there remains of it something which is _eternal_,\"\nand this eternity of the mind is a certain mode of thinking. But do not\nlet yourselves be deceived; there is no such eternity of the individual\nmind. Everything is _sub \u00e6ternitatis specie_--that is to say, pure\nillusion. Nothing could be more dreary, nothing more desolating, nothing\nmore anti-vital than this happiness, this _beatitudo_, of Spinoza, that\nconsists in the intellectual love of the mind towards God, which is\nnothing else but the very love with which God loves Himself (prop,\nxxxvi.). Our happiness--that is to say, our liberty--consists in the\nconstant and eternal love of God towards men. So affirms the corollary\nto this thirty-sixth proposition. And all this in order to arrive at the\nconclusion, which is the final and crowning proposition of the whole\n_Ethic_, that happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.\nThe everlasting refrain! Or, to put it plainly, we proceed from God and\nto God we return, which, translated into concrete language, the language\nof life and feeling, means that my personal consciousness sprang from\nnothingness, from my unconsciousness, and to nothingness it will return.\n\nAnd this most dreary and desolating voice of Spinoza is the very voice\nof reason. And the liberty of which he tells us is a terrible liberty.\nAnd against Spinoza and his doctrine of happiness there is only one\nirresistible argument, the argument _ad hominem_. Was he happy, Benedict\nSpinoza, while, to allay his inner unhappiness, he was discoursing of\nhappiness? Was he free?\n\nIn the corollary to proposition xli. of this same final and most tragic\npart of that tremendous tragedy of his _Ethic_, the poor desperate Jew\nof Amsterdam discourses of the common persuasion of the vulgar of the\ntruth of eternal life. Let us hear what he says: \"It would appear that\nthey esteem piety and religion--and, indeed, all that is referred to\nfortitude or strength of mind--as burdens which they expect to lay down\nafter death, when they hope to receive a reward for their servitude, not\nfor their piety and religion in this life. Nor is it even this hope\nalone that leads them; the fear of frightful punishments with which they\nare menaced after death also influences them to live--in so far as their\nimpotence and poverty of spirit permits--in conformity with the\nprescription of the Divine law. And were not this hope and this fear\ninfused into the minds of men--but, on the contrary, did they believe\nthat the soul perished with the body, and that, beyond the grave, there\nwas no other life prepared for the wretched who had borne the burden _of\npiety_ in this--they would return to their natural inclinations,\npreferring to accommodate everything to their own liking, and would\nfollow fortune rather than reason. But all this appears no less absurd\nthan it would be to suppose that a man, because he did not believe that\nhe could nourish his body eternally with wholesome food, would saturate\nhimself with deadly poisons; or than if because believing that his soul\nwas not eternal and immortal, he should therefore prefer to be without a\nsoul (_amens_) and to live without reason; all of which is so absurd as\nto be scarcely worth refuting (_qu\u00e6 adeo absurda sunt, ut vix recenseri\nmereantur_).\"\n\nWhen a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that\neither it is flagrantly stupid--in which case all comment is\nsuperfluous--or it is something formidable, the very crux of the\nproblem. And this it is in this case. Yes! poor Portuguese Jew exiled in\nHolland, yes! that he who is convinced without a vestige of doubt,\nwithout the faintest hope of any saving uncertainty, that his soul is\nnot immortal, should prefer to be without a soul (_amens_), or\nirrational, or idiot, that he should prefer not to have been born, is a\nsupposition that has nothing, absolutely nothing, absurd in it. Was he\nhappy, the poor Jewish intellectualist definer of intellectual love and\nof happiness? For that and no other is the problem. \"What does it profit\nthee to know the definition of compunction if thou dost not feel it?\"\nsays \u00e0 Kempis. And what profits it to discuss or to define happiness if\nyou cannot thereby achieve happiness? Not inapposite in this connection\nis that terrible story that Diderot tells of a eunuch who desired to\ntake lessons in esthetics from a native of Marseilles in order that he\nmight be better qualified to select the slaves destined for the harem of\nthe Sultan, his master. At the end of the first lesson, a physiological\nlesson, brutally and carnally physiological, the eunuch exclaimed\nbitterly, \"It is evident that I shall never know esthetics!\" Even so,\nand just as eunuchs will never know esthetics as applied to the\nselection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever\nknow ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for\nhappiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is\nreasoned about or defined.\n\nAnd you have another rationalist, one not sad or submissive, like\nSpinoza, but rebellious, and though concealing a despair not less\nbitter, making a hypocritical pretence of light-heartedness, you have\nNietzsche, who discovered _mathematically_ (!!!) that counterfeit of the\nimmortality of the soul which is called \"eternal recurrence,\" and which\nis in fact the most stupendous tragi-comedy or comi-tragedy. The number\nof atoms or irreducible primary elements being finite and the universe\neternal, a combination identical with that which at present exists must\nat some future time be reproduced, and therefore that which now is must\nbe repeated an infinite number of times. This is evident, and just as I\nshall live again the life that I am now living, so I have already lived\nit before an infinite number of times, for there is an eternity that\nstretches into the past--_a parte ante_--just as there will be one\nstretching into the future--_a parte post_. But, unfortunately, it\nhappens that I remember none of my previous existences, and perhaps it\nis impossible that I should remember them, for two things absolutely and\ncompletely identical are but one. Instead of supposing that we live in a\nfinite universe, composed of a finite number of irreducible primary\nelements, suppose that we live in an infinite universe, without limits\nin space--which concrete infinity is not less inconceivable than the\nconcrete eternity in time--then it will follow that this system of\nours, that of the Milky Way, is repeated an infinite number of times in\nthe infinite of space, and that therefore I am now living an infinite\nnumber of lives, all exactly identical. A jest, as you see, but one not\nless comic--that is to say, not less tragic--than that of Nietzsche,\nthat of the laughing lion. And why does the lion laugh? I think he\nlaughs with rage, because he can never succeed in finding consolation in\nthe thought that he has been the same lion before and is destined to be\nthe same lion again.\n\nBut if Spinoza and Nietzsche were indeed both rationalists, each after\nhis own manner, they were not spiritual eunuchs; they had heart,\nfeeling, and, above all, hunger, a mad hunger for eternity, for\nimmortality. The physical eunuch does not feel the need of reproducing\nhimself carnally, in the body, and neither does the spiritual eunuch\nfeel the hunger for self-perpetuation.\n\nCertain it is that there are some who assert that reason suffices them,\nand they counsel us to desist from seeking to penetrate into the\nimpenetrable. But of those who say that they have no need of any faith\nin an eternal personal life to furnish them with incentives to living\nand motives for action, I know not well how to think. A man blind from\nbirth may also assure us that he feels no great longing to enjoy the\nworld of sight nor suffers any great anguish from not having enjoyed it,\nand we must needs believe him, for what is wholly unknown cannot be the\nobject of desire--_nihil volitum quin pr\u00e6cognitum_, there can be no\nvolition save of things already known. But I cannot be persuaded that he\nwho has once in his life, either in his youth or for some other brief\nspace of time, cherished the belief in the immortality of the soul, will\never find peace without it. And of this sort of blindness from birth\nthere are but few instances among us, and then only by a kind of strange\naberration. For the merely and exclusively rational man is an aberration\nand nothing but an aberration.\n\nMore sincere, much more sincere, are those who say: \"We must not talk\nabout it, for in talking about it we only waste our time and weaken our\nwill; let us do our duty here and hereafter let come what may.\" But this\nsincerity hides a yet deeper insincerity. May it perhaps be that by\nsaying \"We must not talk about it,\" they succeed in not thinking about\nit? Our will is weakened? And what then? We lose the capacity for human\naction? And what then? It is very convenient to tell a man whom a fatal\ndisease condemns to an early death, and who knows it, not to think about\nit.\n\n    _Meglio oprando obliar, senz\u00e1 indagarlo,\n    Questo enorme mister del universo!_\n\n\"Better to work and to forget and not to probe into this vast mystery of\nthe universe!\" Carducci wrote in his _Idilio Maremmano_, the same\nCarducci who at the close of his ode _Sul Monte Mario_ tells us how the\nearth, the mother of the fugitive soul, must roll its burden of glory\nand sorrow round the sun \"until, worn out beneath the equator, mocked by\nthe last flames of dying heat, the exhausted human race is reduced to a\nsingle man and woman, who, standing in the midst of dead woods,\nsurrounded by sheer mountains, livid, with glassy eyes watch thee, O\nsun, set across the immense frozen waste.\"\n\nBut is it possible for us to give ourselves to any serious and lasting\nwork, forgetting the vast mystery of the universe and abandoning all\nattempt to understand it? Is it possible to contemplate the vast All\nwith a serene soul, in the spirit of the Lucretian piety, if we are\nconscious of the thought that a time must come when this All will no\nlonger be reflected in any human consciousness?\n\nCain, in Byron's poem, asks of Lucifer, the prince of the intellectuals,\n\"Are ye happy?\" and Lucifer replies, \"We are mighty.\" Cain questions\nagain, \"Are ye happy?\" and then the great Intellectual says to him: \"No;\nart thou?\" And further on, this same Lucifer says to Adah, the sister\nand wife of Cain: \"Choose betwixt love and knowledge--since there is no\nother choice.\" And in the same stupendous poem, when Cain says that the\ntree of the knowledge of good and evil was a lying tree, for \"we know\nnothing; at least it promised knowledge at the price of death,\" Lucifer\nanswers him: \"It may be death leads to the highest knowledge\"--that is\nto say, to nothingness.\n\nTo this word _knowledge_ which Lord Byron uses in the above quotations,\nthe Spanish _ciencia_, the French _science_, the German _Wissenschaft_,\nis often opposed the word _wisdom, sabiduria, sagesse, Weisheit_.\n\n    Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,\n    Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest,\n\nsays another lord, Tennyson, in his _Locksley Hall_. And what is this\nwisdom which we have to seek chiefly in the poets, leaving knowledge on\none side? It is well enough to say with Matthew Arnold in his\nIntroduction to Wordsworth's poems, that poetry is reality and\nphilosophy illusion; but reason is always reason and reality is always\nreality, that which can be proved to exist externally to us, whether we\nfind in it consolation or despair.\n\nI do not know why so many people were scandalized, or pretended to be\nscandalized, when Bruneti\u00e8re proclaimed again the bankruptcy of science.\nFor science as a substitute for religion and reason as a substitute for\nfaith have always fallen to pieces. Science will be able to satisfy, and\nin fact does satisfy in an increasing measure, our increasing logical or\nintellectual needs, our desire to know and understand the truth; but\nscience does not satisfy the needs of our heart and our will, and far\nfrom satisfying our hunger for immortality it contradicts it. Rational\ntruth and life stand in opposition to one another. And is it possible\nthat there is any other truth than rational truth?\n\nIt must remain established, therefore, that reason--human reason--within\nits limits, not only does not prove rationally that the soul is\nimmortal or that the human consciousness shall preserve its\nindestructibility through the tracts of time to come, but that it proves\nrather--within its limits, I repeat--that the individual consciousness\ncannot persist after the death of the physical organism upon which it\ndepends. And these limits, within which I say that human reason proves\nthis, are the limits of rationality, of what is known by demonstration.\nBeyond these limits is the irrational, which, whether it be called the\nsuper-rational or the infra-rational or the contra-rational, is all the\nsame thing. Beyond these limits is the absurd of Tertullian, the\nimpossible of the _certum est, quia impossibile est_. And this absurd\ncan only base itself upon the most absolute uncertainty.\n\nThe rational dissolution ends in dissolving reason itself; it ends in\nthe most absolute scepticism, in the phenomenalism of Hume or in the\ndoctrine of absolute contingencies of Stuart Mill, the most consistent\nand logical of the positivists. The supreme triumph of reason, the\nanalytical--that is, the destructive and dissolvent--faculty, is to cast\ndoubt upon its own validity. The stomach that contains an ulcer ends by\ndigesting itself; and reason ends by destroying the immediate and\nabsolute validity of the concept of truth and of the concept of\nnecessity. Both concepts are relative; there is no absolute truth, no\nabsolute necessity. We call a concept true which agrees with the general\nsystem of all our concepts; and we call a perception true which does not\ncontradict the system of our perceptions. Truth is coherence. But as\nregards the whole system, the aggregate, as there is nothing outside of\nit of which we have knowledge, we cannot say whether it is true or not.\nIt is conceivable that the universe, as it exists in itself, outside of\nour consciousness, may be quite other than it appears to us, although\nthis is a supposition that has no meaning for reason. And as regards\nnecessity, is there an absolute necessity? By necessary we mean merely\nthat which is, and in so far as it is, for in another more\ntranscendental sense, what absolute necessity, logical and independent\nof the fact that the universe exists, is there that there should be a\nuniverse or anything else at all?\n\nAbsolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than scepticism, in\nthe most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of the\nreasoning reason.\n\nFeeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor does\nreason succeed in converting truth into consolation. But reason going\nbeyond truth itself, beyond the concept of reality itself, succeeds in\nplunging itself into the depths of scepticism. And in this abyss the\nscepticism of the reason encounters the despair of the heart, and this\nencounter leads to the discovery of a basis--a terrible basis!--for\nconsolation to build on.\n\nLet us examine it.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[26] _Pragmatism, a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking_. Popular\nlectures on philosophy by William James, 1907.\n\n[27] _Treatise of Human Nature_, book i., part iv., sect. vi., \"Of\nPersonal Identity\": \"I never can catch _myself_ at any time without a\nperception, and never can observe anything but the perception.\"\n\n[28] Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, _Lectures on the History of the Eastern\nChurch_, lecture i., sect. iii.\n\n[29] 1 Cor. i. 23.\n\n[30] Gustave Flaubert, _Correspondance_, troisi\u00e8me s\u00e9rie (1854-1869).\nParis, 1910.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nIN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS\n\n_Parce unic\u00e6 spes totius orbis._--TERTULLIANUS, Adversus Marcionem, 5.\n\n\nWe have seen that the vital longing for human immortality finds no\nconsolation in reason and that reason leaves us without incentive or\nconsolation in life and life itself without real finality. But here, in\nthe depths of the abyss, the despair of the heart and of the will and\nthe scepticism of reason meet face to face and embrace like brothers.\nAnd we shall see it is from this embrace, a tragic--that is to say, an\nintimately loving--embrace, that the wellspring of life will flow, a\nlife serious and terrible. Scepticism, uncertainty--the position to\nwhich reason, by practising its analysis upon itself, upon its own\nvalidity, at last arrives--is the foundation upon which the heart's\ndespair must build up its hope.\n\nDisillusioned, we had to abandon the position of those who seek to give\nconsolation the force of rational and logical truth, pretending to prove\nthe rationality, or at any rate the non-irrationality, of consolation;\nand we had to abandon likewise the position of those who seek to give\nrational truth the force of consolation and of a motive for life.\nNeither the one nor the other of these positions satisfied us. The one\nis at variance with our reason, the other with our feeling. These two\npowers can never conclude peace and we must needs live by their war. We\nmust make of this war, of war itself, the very condition of our\nspiritual life.\n\nNeither does this high debate admit of that indecent and repugnant\nexpedient which the more or less parliamentary type of politician has\ndevised and dubbed \"a formula of agreement,\" the property of which is to\nrender it impossible for either side to claim to be victorious. There\nis no place here for a time-serving compromise. Perhaps a degenerate and\ncowardly reason might bring itself to propose some such formula of\nagreement, for in truth reason lives by formulas; but life, which cannot\nbe formulated, life which lives and seeks to live for ever, does not\nsubmit to formulas. Its sole formula is: all or nothing. Feeling does\nnot compound its differences with middle terms.\n\n_Initium sapienti\u00e6 timor Domini_, it is said, meaning perhaps _timor\nmortis_, or it may be, _timor vit\u00e6_, which is the same thing. Always it\ncomes about that the beginning of wisdom is a fear.\n\nIs it true to say of this saving scepticism which I am now going to\ndiscuss, that it is doubt? It is doubt, yes, but it is much more than\ndoubt. Doubt is commonly something very cold, of very little vitalizing\nforce, and above all something rather artificial, especially since\nDescartes degraded it to the function of a method. The conflict between\nreason and life is something more than a doubt. For doubt is easily\nresolved into a comic element.\n\nThe methodical doubt of Descartes is a comic doubt, a doubt purely\ntheoretical and provisional--that is to say, the doubt of a man who acts\nas if he doubted without really doubting. And because it was a\nstove-excogitated doubt, the man who deduced that he existed from the\nfact that he thought did not approve of \"those turbulent\n(_brouillonnes_) and restless persons who, being called neither by birth\nnor by fortune to the management of public affairs, are perpetually\ndevising some new reformation,\" and he was pained by the suspicion that\nthere might be something of this kind in his own writings. No, he,\nDescartes, proposed only to \"reform his own thoughts and to build upon\nground that was wholly his.\" And he resolved not to accept anything as\ntrue when he did not recognize it clearly to be so, and to make a clean\nsweep of all prejudices and received ideas, to the end that he might\nconstruct his intellectual habitation anew. But \"as it is not enough,\nbefore beginning to rebuild one's dwelling-house, to pull it down and to\nfurnish materials and architects, or to study architecture oneself ...\nbut it is also necessary to be provided with some other wherein to lodge\nconveniently while the work is in progress,\" he framed for himself a\nprovisional ethic--_une morale de provision_--the first law of which was\nto observe the customs of his country and to keep always to the religion\nin which, by the grace of God, he had been instructed from his infancy,\ngoverning himself in all things according to the most moderate opinions.\nYes, exactly, a provisional religion and even a provisional God! And he\nchose the most moderate opinions \"because these are always the most\nconvenient for practice.\" But it is best to proceed no further.\n\nThis methodical or theoretical Cartesian doubt, this philosophical doubt\nexcogitated in a stove, is not the doubt, is not the scepticism, is not\nthe incertitude, that I am talking about here. No! This other doubt is a\npassionate doubt, it is the eternal conflict between reason and feeling,\nscience and life, logic and biotic. For science destroys the concept of\npersonality by reducing it to a complex in continual flux from moment to\nmoment--that is to say, it destroys the very foundation of the spiritual\nand emotional life, which ranges itself unyieldingly against reason.\n\nAnd this doubt cannot avail itself of any provisional ethic, but has to\nfound its ethic, as we shall see, on the conflict itself, an ethic of\nbattle, and itself has to serve as the foundation of religion. And it\ninhabits a house which is continually being demolished and which\ncontinually it has to rebuild. Without ceasing the will, I mean the will\nnever to die, the spirit of unsubmissiveness to death, labours to build\nup the house of life, and without ceasing the keen blasts and stormy\nassaults of reason beat it down.\n\nAnd more than this, in the concrete vital problem that concerns us,\nreason takes up no position whatever. In truth, it does something worse\nthan deny the immortality of the soul--for that at any rate would be one\nsolution--it refuses even to recognize the problem as our vital desire\npresents it to us. In the rational and logical sense of the term\nproblem, there is no such problem. This question of the immortality of\nthe soul, of the persistence of the individual consciousness, is not\nrational, it falls outside reason. As a problem, and whatever solution\nit may receive, it is irrational. Rationally even the very propounding\nof the problem lacks sense. The immortality of the soul is as\nunconceivable as, in all strictness, is its absolute mortality. For the\npurpose of explaining the world and existence--and such is the task of\nreason--it is not necessary that we should suppose that our soul is\neither mortal or immortal. The mere enunciation of the problem is,\ntherefore, an irrationality.\n\nLet us hear what our brother Kierkegaard has to say. \"The danger of\nabstract thought is seen precisely in respect of the problem of\nexistence, the difficulty of which it solves by going round it,\nafterwards boasting that it has completely explained it. It explains\nimmortality in general, and it does so in a remarkable way by\nidentifying it with eternity--with the eternity which is essentially the\nmedium of thought. But with the immortality of each individually\nexisting man, wherein precisely the difficulty lies, abstraction does\nnot concern itself, is not interested in it. And yet the difficulty of\nexistence lies just in the interest of the existing being--the man who\nexists is infinitely interested in existing. Abstract thought besteads\nimmortality only in order that it may kill me as an individual being\nwith an individual existence, and so make me immortal, pretty much in\nthe same way as that famous physician in one of Holberg's plays, whose\nmedicine, while it took away the patient's fever, took away his life at\nthe same time. An abstract thinker, who refuses to disclose and admit\nthe relation that exists between his abstract thought and the fact that\nhe is an existing being, produces a comic impression upon us, however\naccomplished and distinguished he may be, for he runs the risk of\nceasing to be a man. While an effective man, compounded of infinitude\nand finitude, owes his effectiveness precisely to the conjunction of\nthese two elements and is infinitely interested in existing, an abstract\nthinker, similarly compounded, is a double being, a fantastical being,\nwho lives in the pure being of abstraction, and at times presents the\nsorry figure of a professor who lays aside this abstract essence as he\nlays aside his walking-stick. When one reads the Life of a thinker of\nthis kind--whose writings may be excellent--one trembles at the thought\nof what it is to be a man. And when one reads in his writings that\nthinking and being are the same thing, one thinks, remembering his life,\nthat that being, which is identical with thinking, is not precisely the\nsame thing as being a man\" (_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_,\nchap. iii.).\n\nWhat intense passion--that is to say, what truth--there is in this\nbitter invective against Hegel, prototype of the rationalist!--for the\nrationalist takes away our fever by taking away our life, and promises\nus, instead of a concrete, an abstract immortality, as if the hunger for\nimmortality that consumes us were an abstract and not a concrete hunger!\n\nIt may indeed be said that when once the dog is dead there is an end to\nthe rabies, and that after I have died I shall no more be tortured by\nthis rage of not dying, and that the fear of death, or more properly, of\nnothingness, is an irrational fear, but ... Yes, but ... _Eppur si\nmuove!_ And it will go on moving. For it is the source of all movement!\n\nI doubt, however, whether our brother Kierkegaard is altogether in the\nright, for this same abstract thinker, or thinker of abstractions,\nthinks _in order that_ he may exist, that he may not cease to exist, or\nthinks perhaps in order to forget that he will have to cease to exist.\nThis is the root of the passion for abstract thought. And possibly Hegel\nwas as infinitely interested as Kierkegaard in his own concrete,\nindividual existence, although the professional decorum of the\nstate-philosopher compelled him to conceal the fact.\n\nFaith in immortality is irrational. And, notwithstanding, faith, life,\nand reason have mutual need of one another. This vital longing is not\nproperly a problem, cannot assume a logical status, cannot be formulated\nin propositions susceptible of rational discussion; but it announces\nitself in us as hunger announces itself. Neither can the wolf that\nthrows itself with the fury of hunger upon its prey or with the fury of\ninstinct upon the she-wolf, enunciate its impulse rationally and as a\nlogical problem. Reason and faith are two enemies, neither of which can\nmaintain itself without the other. The irrational demands to be\nrationalized and reason only can operate on the irrational. They are\ncompelled to seek mutual support and association. But association in\nstruggle, for struggle is a mode of association.\n\nIn the world of living beings the struggle for life establishes an\nassociation, and a very close one, not only between those who unite\ntogether in combat against a common foe, but between the combatants\nthemselves. And is there any possible association more intimate than\nthat uniting the animal that eats another and the animal that is eaten,\nbetween the devourer and the devoured? And if this is clearly seen in\nthe struggle between individuals, it is still more evident in the\nstruggle between peoples. War has always been the most effective factor\nof progress, even more than commerce. It is through war that conquerors\nand conquered learn to know each other and in consequence to love each\nother.\n\nChristianity, the foolishness of the Cross, the irrational faith that\nChrist rose from the dead in order to raise us from the dead, was saved\nby the rationalistic Hellenic culture, and this in its turn was saved by\nChristianity. Without Christianity the Renaissance would have been\nimpossible. Without the Gospel, without St. Paul, the peoples who had\ntraversed the Middle Ages would have understood neither Plato nor\nAristotle. A purely rationalist tradition is as impossible as a\ntradition purely religious. It is frequently disputed whether the\nReformation was born as the child of the Renaissance or as a protest\nagainst it, and both propositions may be said to be true, for the son is\nalways born as a protest against the father. It is also said that it was\nthe revived Greek classics that led men like Erasmus back to St. Paul\nand to primitive Christianity, which is the most irrational form of\nChristianity; but it may be retorted that it was St. Paul, that it was\nthe Christian irrationality underlying his Catholic theology, that led\nthem back to the classics. \"Christianity is what it has come to be,\" it\nhas been said, \"only through its alliance with antiquity, while with the\nCopts and Ethiopians it is but a kind of buffoonery. Islam developed\nunder the influence of Persian and Greek culture, and under that of the\nTurks it has been transformed into a destructive barbarism.\"[31]\n\nWe have emerged from the Middle Ages, from the medieval faith as ardent\nas it was at heart despairing, and not without its inward and abysmal\nincertitudes, and we have entered upon the age of rationalism, likewise\nnot without its incertitudes. Faith in reason is exposed to the same\nrational indefensibility as all other faith. And we may say with Robert\nBrowning,\n\n    All we have gained, then, by our unbelief\n    Is a life of doubt diversified by faith\n    For one of faith diversified by doubt.\n\n                     (_Bishop Blougram's Apology_.)\n\nAnd if, as I have said, faith, life, can only sustain itself by leaning\nupon reason, which renders it transmissible--and above all transmissible\nfrom myself to myself--that is to say, reflective and conscious--it is\nnone the less true that reason in its turn can only sustain itself by\nleaning upon faith, upon life, even if only upon faith in reason, faith\nin its availability for something more than mere knowing, faith in its\navailability for living. Nevertheless, neither is faith transmissible or\nrational, nor is reason vital.\n\nThe will and the intelligence have need of one another, and the reverse\nof that old aphorism, _nihil volitum quin pr\u00e6cognitum_, nothing is\nwilled but what is previously known, is not so paradoxical as at first\nsight it may appear--_nihil cognitum quin pr\u00e6volitum_, nothing is known\nbut what is previously willed. Vinet, in his study of Cousin's book on\nthe _Pens\u00e9es_ of Pascal, says: \"The very knowledge of the mind as such\nhas need of the heart. Without the desire to see there is no seeing; in\na great materialization of life and of thought there is no believing in\nthe things of the spirit.\" We shall see presently that to believe is, in\nthe first instance, to wish to believe.\n\nThe will and the intelligence seek opposite ends: that we may absorb the\nworld into ourselves, appropriate it to ourselves, is the aim of the\nwill; that we may be absorbed into the world, that of the intelligence.\nOpposite ends?--are they not rather one and the same? No, they are not,\nalthough they may seem to be so. The intelligence is monist or\npantheist, the will monotheist or egoist. The intelligence has no need\nof anything outside it to exercise itself upon; it builds its foundation\nwith ideas themselves, while the will requires matter. To know something\nis to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it,\nto dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself.\n\nPhilosophy and religion are enemies, and because they are enemies they\nhave need of one another. There is no religion without some philosophic\nbasis, no philosophy without roots in religion. Each lives by its\ncontrary. The history of philosophy is, strictly speaking, a history of\nreligion. And the attacks which are directed against religion from a\npresumed scientific or philosophical point of view are merely attacks\nfrom another but opposing religious point of view. \"The opposition which\nprofessedly exists between natural science and Christianity really\nexists between an impulse derived from natural religion blended with the\nscientific investigation of nature, and the validity of the Christian\nview of the world, which assures to spirit its pre-eminence over the\nentire world of nature,\" says Ritschl (_Rechtfertgung und Vers\u00f6hnung_,\niii. chap. iv. \u00a7 28). Now this instinct is the instinct of rationality\nitself. And the critical idealism of Kant is of religious origin, and it\nis in order to save religion that Kant enlarged the limits of reason\nafter having in a certain sense dissolved it in scepticism. The system\nof antitheses, contradictions, and antinomies, upon which Hegel\nconstructed his absolute idealism, has its root and germ in Kant\nhimself, and this root is an irrational root.\n\nWe shall see later on, when we come to deal with faith, that faith is in\nits essence simply a matter of will, not of reason, that to believe is\nto wish to believe, and to believe in God is, before all and above all,\nto wish that there may be a God. In the same way, to believe in the\nimmortality of the soul is to wish that the soul may be immortal, but to\nwish it with such force that this volition shall trample reason under\nfoot and pass beyond it. But reason has its revenge.\n\nThe instinct of knowing and the instinct of living, or rather of\nsurviving, come into conflict. In his work on the _Analysis of the\nSensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical_,[32] Dr.\nE. Mach tells us that not even the investigator, the savant, _der\nForscher_, is exempted from taking his part in the struggle for\nexistence, that even the roads of science lead mouth-wards, and that in\nthe actual conditions of the society in which we live the pure instinct\nof knowing, _der reine Erkenntnisstrieb_, is still no more than an\nideal. And so it always will be. _Primum vivere, deinde philosophari_,\nor perhaps better, _primum supervivere_ or _superesse_.\n\nEvery position of permanent agreement or harmony between reason and\nlife, between philosophy and religion, becomes impossible. And the\ntragic history of human thought is simply the history of a struggle\nbetween reason and life--reason bent on rationalizing life and forcing\nit to submit to the inevitable, to mortality; life bent on vitalizing\nreason and forcing it to serve as a support for its own vital desires.\nAnd this is the history of philosophy, inseparable from the history of\nreligion.\n\nOur sense of the world of objective reality is necessarily subjective,\nhuman, anthropomorphic. And vitalism will always rise up against\nrationalism; reason will always find itself confronted by will. Hence\nthe rhythm of the history of philosophy and the alternation of periods\nin which life imposes itself, giving birth to spiritual forms, with\nthose in which reason imposes itself, giving birth to materialist forms,\nalthough both of these classes of forms of belief may be disguised by\nother names. Neither reason nor life ever acknowledges itself\nvanquished. But we will return to this in the next chapter.\n\nThe vital consequence of rationalism would be suicide. Kierkegaard puts\nit very well: \"The consequence for existence[33] of pure thought is\nsuicide.... We do not praise suicide but passion. The thinker, on the\ncontrary, is a curious animal--for a few spells during the day he is\nvery intelligent, but, for the rest, he has nothing in common with man\"\n(_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, chap iii., \u00a7 1).\n\nAs the thinker, in spite of all, does not cease to be a man, he employs\nreason in the interests of life, whether he knows it or not. Life cheats\nreason and reason cheats life. Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy\nfabricated in the interest of life a teleologic-evolutionist system,\nrational in appearance, which might serve as a support for our vital\nlonging. This philosophy, the basis of the orthodox Christian\nsupernaturalism, whether Catholic or Protestant, was, in its essence,\nmerely a trick on the part of life to force reason to lend it its\nsupport. But reason supported it with such pressure that it ended by\npulverizing it.\n\nI have read that the ex-Carmelite, Hyacinthe Loyson, declared that he\ncould present himself before God with tranquillity, for he was at peace\nwith his conscience and with his reason. With what conscience? If with\nhis religious conscience, then I do not understand. For it is a truth\nthat no man can serve two masters, and least of all when, though they\nmay sign truces and armistices and compromises, these two are enemies\nbecause of their conflicting interests.\n\nTo all this someone is sure to object that life ought to subject itself\nto reason, to which we will reply that nobody ought to do what he is\nunable to do, and life cannot subject itself to reason. \"Ought,\ntherefore can,\" some Kantian will retort. To which we shall demur:\n\"Cannot, therefore ought not.\" And life cannot submit itself to reason,\nbecause the end of life is living and not understanding.\n\nAgain, there are those who talk of the religious duty of resignation to\nmortality. This is indeed the very summit of aberration and insincerity.\nBut someone is sure to oppose the idea of veracity to that of sincerity.\nGranted, and yet the two may very well be reconciled. Veracity, the\nhomage I owe to what I believe to be rational, to what logically we\ncall truth, moves me to affirm, in this case, that the immortality of\nthe individual soul is a contradiction in terms, that it is something,\nnot only irrational, but contra-rational; but sincerity leads me to\naffirm also my refusal to resign myself to this previous affirmation and\nmy protest against its validity. What I feel is a truth, at any rate as\nmuch a truth as what I see, touch, hear, or what is demonstrated to\nme--nay, I believe it is more of a truth--and sincerity obliges me not\nto hide what I feel.\n\nAnd life, quick to defend itself, searches for the weak point in reason\nand finds it in scepticism, which it straightway fastens upon, seeking\nto save itself by means of this stranglehold. It needs the weakness of\nits adversary.\n\nNothing is sure. Everything is elusive and in the air. In an outburst of\npassion Lamennais exclaims: \"But what! Shall we, losing all hope, shut\nour eyes and plunge into the voiceless depths of a universal scepticism?\nShall we doubt that we think, that we feel, that we are? Nature does not\nallow it; she forces us to believe even when our reason is not\nconvinced. Absolute certainty and absolute doubt are both alike\nforbidden to us. We hover in a vague mean between these two extremes, as\nbetween being and nothingness; for complete scepticism would be the\nextinction of the intelligence and the total death of man. But it is not\ngiven to man to annihilate himself; there is in him something which\ninvincibly resists destruction, I know not what vital faith, indomitable\neven by his will. Whether he likes it or not, he must believe, because\nhe must act, because he must preserve himself. His reason, if he\nlistened only to that, teaching him to doubt everything, itself\nincluded, would reduce him to a state of absolute inaction; he would\nperish before even he had been able to prove to himself that he existed\"\n(_Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rence en mati\u00e8re de religion_, iii^e partie, chap.\nlxvii.).\n\nReason, however, does not actually lead us to absolute scepticism. No!\nReason does not lead me and cannot lead me to doubt that I exist.\nWhither reason does lead me is to vital scepticism, or more properly, to\nvital negation--not merely to doubt, but to deny, that my consciousness\nsurvives my death. Scepticism is produced by the clash between reason\nand desire. And from this clash, from this embrace between despair and\nscepticism, is born that holy, that sweet, that saving incertitude,\nwhich is our supreme consolation.\n\nThe absolute and complete certainty, on the one hand, that death is a\ncomplete, definite, irrevocable annihilation of personal consciousness,\na certainty of the same order as the certainty that the three angles of\na triangle are equal to two right angles, or, on the other hand, the\nabsolute and complete certainty that our personal consciousness is\nprolonged beyond death in these present or in other conditions, and\nabove all including in itself that strange and adventitious addition of\neternal rewards and punishments--both of these certainties alike would\nmake life impossible for us. In the most secret chamber of the spirit of\nhim who believes himself convinced that death puts an end to his\npersonal consciousness, his memory, for ever, and all unknown to him\nperhaps, there lurks a shadow, a vague shadow, a shadow of shadow, of\nuncertainty, and while he says within himself, \"Well, let us live this\nlife that passes away, for there is no other!\" the silence of this\nsecret chamber speaks to him and murmurs, \"Who knows!...\" He may not\nthink he hears it, but he hears it nevertheless. And likewise in some\nsecret place of the soul of the believer who most firmly holds the\nbelief in a future life, there is a muffled voice, a voice of\nuncertainty, which whispers in the ear of his spirit, \"Who knows!...\"\nThese voices are like the humming of a mosquito when the south-west wind\nroars through the trees in the wood; we cannot distinguish this faint\nhumming, yet nevertheless, merged in the clamour of the storm, it\nreaches the ear. Otherwise, without this uncertainty, how could we live?\n\n_\"Is there?\" \"Is there not?\"_--these are the bases of our inner life.\nThere may be a rationalist who has never wavered in his conviction of\nthe mortality of the soul, and there may be a vitalist who has never\nwavered in his faith in immortality; but at the most this would only\nprove that just as there are natural monstrosities, so there are those\nwho are stupid as regards heart and feeling, however great their\nintelligence, and those who are stupid intellectually, however great\ntheir virtue. But, in normal cases, I cannot believe those who assure me\nthat never, not in a fleeting moment, not in the hours of direst\nloneliness and grief, has this murmur of uncertainty breathed upon their\nconsciousness. I do not understand those men who tell me that the\nprospect of the yonder side of death has never tormented them, that the\nthought of their own annihilation never disquiets them. For my part I do\nnot wish to make peace between my heart and my head, between my faith\nand my reason--I wish rather that there should be war between them!\n\nIn the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark it is related how a\nman brought unto Jesus his son who was possessed by a dumb spirit, and\nwheresoever the spirit took him it tore him, causing him to foam and\ngnash his teeth and pine away, wherefore he sought to bring him to Jesus\nthat he might cure him. And the Master, impatient of those who sought\nonly for signs and wonders, exclaimed: \"O faithless generation, how long\nshall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me\"\n(ver. 19), and they brought him unto him. And when the Master saw him\nwallowing on the ground, he asked his father how long it was ago since\nthis had come unto him and the father replied that it was since he was &\nchild. And Jesus said unto him: \"If thou canst believe, all things are\npossible to him that believeth\" (ver. 23). And then the father of the\nepileptic or demoniac uttered these pregnant and immortal words: \"Lord,\nI believe; help thou mine unbelief!\"--_Pistey\u00f4, kyrie, bo\u00eathei t\u00ea\nhapistia mou_ (ver. 24).\n\n\"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!\" A contradiction seemingly,\nfor if he believes, if he trusts, how is it that he beseeches the Lord\nto help his lack of trust? Nevertheless, it is this contradiction that\ngives to the heart's cry of the father of the demoniac its most profound\nhuman value. His faith is a faith that is based upon incertitude.\nBecause he believes--that is to say, because he wishes to believe,\nbecause he has need that his son should be cured--he beseeches the Lord\nto help his unbelief, his doubt that such a cure could be effected. Of\nsuch kind is human faith; of such kind was the heroic faith that Sancho\nPanza had in his master, the knight Don Quijote de la Mancha, as I think\nI have shown in my _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_; a faith based upon\nincertitude, upon doubt. Sancho Panza was indeed a man, a whole and a\ntrue man, and he was not stupid, for only if he had been stupid would he\nhave believed, without a shadow of doubt, in the follies of his master.\nAnd his master himself did not believe in them without a shadow of\ndoubt, for neither was Don Quixote, though mad, stupid. He was at heart\na man of despair, as I think I have shown in my above-mentioned book.\nAnd because he was a man of an heroical despair, the hero of that inward\nand resigned despair, he stands as the eternal exemplar of every man\nwhose soul is the battle-ground of reason and immortal desire. Our Lord\nDon Quixote is the prototype of the vitalist whose faith is based upon\nuncertainty, and Sancho is the prototype of the rationalist who doubts\nhis own reason.\n\nTormented by torturing doubts, August Hermann Francke resolved to call\nupon God, a God in whom he did not believe, or rather in whom he\nbelieved that he did not believe, imploring Him to take pity upon him,\nupon the poor pietist Francke, if perchance He really existed.[34] And\nfrom a similar state of mind came the inspiration of the sonnet entitled\n\"The Atheist's Prayer,\" which is included in my _Rosario de Sonetos\nL\u00edricos_, and closes with these lines:\n\n    _Sufro yo a tu costa,\n    Dios no existiente, pues si t\u00fa existieras\n    existier\u00eda yo tambi\u00e9n de veras._[35]\n\nYes, if God the guarantor of our personal immortality existed, then\nshould we ourselves really exist. And if He exists not, neither do we\nexist.\n\nThat terrible secret, that hidden will of God which, translated into the\nlanguage of theology, is known as predestination, that idea which\ndictated to Luther his _servum arbitrium_, and which gives to Calvinism\nits tragic sense, that doubt of our own salvation, is in its essence\nnothing but uncertainty, and this uncertainty, allied with despair,\nforms the basis of faith. Faith, some say, consists in not thinking\nabout it, in surrendering ourselves trustingly to the arms of God, the\nsecrets of whose providence are inscrutable. Yes, but infidelity also\nconsists in not thinking about it. This absurd faith, this faith that\nknows no shadow of uncertainty, this faith of the stupid coalheaver,\njoins hands with an absurd incredulity, the incredulity that knows no\nshadow of uncertainty, the incredulity of the intellectuals who are\nafflicted with affective stupidity in order that they may not think\nabout it.\n\nAnd what but uncertainty, doubt, the voice of reason, was that abyss,\nthat terrible _gouffre_, before which Pascal trembled? And it was that\nwhich led him to pronounce his terrible sentence, _il faut\ns'ab\u00eatir_--need is that we become fools!\n\nAll Jansenism, the Catholic adaptation of Calvinism, bears the same\nimpress. Port-Royal, which owed its existence to a Basque, the Abb\u00e9 de\nSaint-Cyran, a man of the same race as I\u00f1igo de Loyola and as he who\nwrites these lines, always preserved deep down a sediment of religious\ndespair, of the suicide of reason. Loyola also slew his reason in\nobedience.\n\nOur affirmation is despair, our negation is despair, and from despair we\nabstain from affirming and denying. Note the greater part of our\natheists and you will see that they are atheists from a kind of rage,\nrage at not being able to believe that there is a God. They are the\npersonal enemies of God. They have invested Nothingness with substance\nand personality, and their No-God is an Anti-God.\n\nAnd concerning that abject and ignoble saying, \"If there were not a God\nit would be necessary to invent Him,\" we shall say nothing. It is the\nexpression of the unclean scepticism of those conservatives who look\nupon religion merely as a means of government and whose interest it is\nthat in the other life there shall be a hell for those who oppose their\nworldly interests in this life. This repugnant and Sadducean phrase is\nworthy of the time-serving sceptic to whom it is attributed.\n\nNo, with all this the deep vital sense has nothing to do. It has nothing\nto do with a transcendental police regimen, or with securing order--and\nwhat an order!--upon earth by means of promises and threats of eternal\nrewards and punishments after death. All this belongs to a lower\nplane--that is to say, it is merely politics, or if you like, ethics.\nThe vital sense has to do with living.\n\nBut it is in our endeavour to represent to ourselves what the life of\nthe soul after death really means that uncertainty finds its surest\nfoundation. This it is that most shakes our vital desire and most\nintensifies the dissolvent efficacy of reason. For even if by a mighty\neffort of faith we overcome that reason which tells and teaches us that\nthe soul is only a function of the physical organism, it yet remains\nfor our imagination to conceive an image of the immortal and eternal\nlife of the soul. This conception involves us in contradictions and\nabsurdities, and it may be that we shall arrive with Kierkegaard at the\nconclusion that if the mortality of the soul is terrible, not less\nterrible is its immortality.\n\nBut when we have overcome the first, the only real difficulty, when we\nhave overcome the impediment of reason, when we have achieved the faith,\nhowever painful and involved in uncertainty it may be, that our personal\nconsciousness shall continue after death, what difficulty, what\nimpediment, lies in the way of our imagining to ourselves this\npersistence of self in harmony with our desire? Yes, we can imagine it\nas an eternal rejuvenescence, as an eternal growth of ourselves, and as\na journeying towards God, towards the Universal Consciousness, without\never an arrival, we can imagine it as ... But who shall put fetters upon\nthe imagination, once it has broken the chain of the rational?\n\nI know that all this is dull reading, tiresome, perhaps tedious, but it\nis all necessary. And I must repeat once again that we have nothing to\ndo with a transcendental police system or with the conversion of God\ninto a great Judge or Policeman--that is to say, we are not concerned\nwith heaven or hell considered as buttresses to shore up our poor\nearthly morality, nor are we concerned with anything egoistic or\npersonal. It is not I myself alone, it is the whole human race that is\ninvolved, it is the ultimate finality of all our civilization. I am but\none, but all men are I's.\n\nDo you remember the end of that _Song of the Wild Cock_ which Leopardi\nwrote in prose?--the despairing Leopardi, the victim of reason, who\nnever succeeded in achieving belief. \"A time will come,\" he says, \"when\nthis Universe and Nature itself will be extinguished. And just as of the\ngrandest kingdoms and empires of mankind and the marvellous things\nachieved therein, very famous in their own time, no vestige or memory\nremains to-day, so, in like manner, of the entire world and of the\nvicissitudes and calamities of all created things there will remain not\na single trace, but a naked silence and a most profound stillness will\nfill the immensity of space. And so before ever it has been uttered or\nunderstood, this admirable and fearful secret of universal existence\nwill be obliterated and lost.\" And this they now describe by a\nscientific and very rationalistic term--namely, _entropia_. Very pretty,\nis it not? Spencer invented the notion of a primordial homogeneity, from\nwhich it is impossible to conceive how any heterogeneity could\noriginate. Well now, this _entropia_ is a kind of ultimate homogeneity,\na state of perfect equilibrium. For a soul avid of life, it is the most\nlike nothingness that the mind can conceive.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo this point, through a series of dolorous reflections, I have brought\nthe reader who has had the patience to follow me, endeavouring always to\ndo equal justice to the claims of reason and of feeling. I have not\nwished to keep silence on matters about which others are silent; I have\nsought to strip naked, not only my own soul, but the human soul, be its\nnature what it may, its destiny to disappear or not to disappear. And we\nhave arrived at the bottom of the abyss, at the irreconcilable conflict\nbetween reason and vital feeling. And having arrived here, I have told\nyou that it is necessary to accept the conflict as such and to live by\nit. Now it remains for me to explain to you how, according to my way of\nfeeling, and even according to my way of thinking, this despair may be\nthe basis of a vigorous life, of an efficacious activity, of an ethic,\nof an esthetic, of a religion and even of a logic. But in what follows\nthere will be as much of imagination as of ratiocination, or rather,\nmuch more.\n\nI do not wish to deceive anyone, or to offer as philosophy what it may\nbe is only poetry or phantasmagoria, in any case a kind of mythology.\nThe divine Plato, after having discussed the immortality of the soul in\nhis dialogue _Ph\u00e6do_ (an ideal--that is to say, a lying--immortality),\nembarked upon an interpretation of the myths which treat of the other\nlife, remarking that it was also necessary to mythologize. Let us, then,\nmythologize.\n\nHe who looks for reasons, strictly so called, scientific arguments,\ntechnically logical reflections, may refuse to follow me further.\nThroughout the remainder of these reflections upon the tragic sense, I\nam going to fish for the attention of the reader with the naked,\nunbaited hook; whoever wishes to bite, let him bite, but I deceive no\none. Only in the conclusion I hope to gather everything together and to\nshow that this religious despair which I have been talking about, and\nwhich is nothing other than the tragic sense of life itself, is, though\nmore or less hidden, the very foundation of the consciousness of\ncivilized individuals and peoples to-day--that is to say, of those\nindividuals and those peoples who do not suffer from stupidity of\nintellect or stupidity of feeling.\n\nAnd this tragic sense is the spring of heroic achievements.\n\nIf in that which follows you shall meet with arbitrary apothegms,\nbrusque transitions, inconsecutive statements, veritable somersaults of\nthought, do not cry out that you have been deceived. We are about to\nenter--if it be that you wish to accompany me--upon a field of\ncontradictions between feeling and reasoning, and we shall have to avail\nourselves of the one as well as of the other.\n\nThat which follows is not the outcome of reason but of life, although in\norder that I may transmit it to you I shall have to rationalize it after\na fashion. The greater part of it can be reduced to no logical theory or\nsystem; but like that tremendous Yankee poet, Walt Whitman, \"I charge\nthat there be no theory or school founded out of me\" (_Myself and\nMine_).\n\nNeither am I the only begetter of the fancies I am about to set forth.\nBy no means. They have also been conceived by other men, if not\nprecisely by other thinkers, who have preceded me in this vale of tears,\nand who have exhibited their life and given expression to it. Their\nlife, I repeat, not their thought, save in so far as it was thought\ninspired by life, thought with a basis of irrationality.\n\nDoes this mean that in all that follows, in the efforts of the\nirrational to express itself, there is a total lack of rationality, of\nall objective value? No; the absolutely, the irrevocably irrational, is\ninexpressible, is intransmissible. But not the contra-rational. Perhaps\nthere is no way of rationalizing the irrational; but there is a way of\nrationalizing the contra-rational, and that is by trying to explain it.\nSince only the rational is intelligible, really intelligible, and since\nthe absurd, being devoid of sense, is condemned to be incommunicable,\nyou will find that whenever we succeed in giving expression and\nintelligibility to anything apparently irrational or absurd we\ninvariably resolve it into something rational, even though it be into\nthe negation of that which we affirm.\n\nThe maddest dreams of the fancy have some ground of reason, and who\nknows if everything that the imagination of man can conceive either has\nnot already happened, or is not now happening or will not happen some\ntime, in some world or another? The possible combinations are perhaps\ninfinite. It only remains to know whether all that is imaginable is\npossible.\n\nIt may also be said, and with justice, that much of what I am about to\nset forth is merely a repetition of ideas which have been expressed a\nhundred times before and a hundred times refuted; but the repetition of\nan idea really implies that its refutation has not been final. And as I\ndo not pretend that the majority of these fancies are new, so neither do\nI pretend, obviously, that other voices before mine have not spoken to\nthe winds the same laments. But when yet another voice echoes the same\neternal lament it can only be inferred that the same grief still dwells\nin the heart.\n\nAnd it comes not amiss to repeat yet once again the same eternal\nlamentations that were already old in the days of Job and Ecclesiastes,\nand even to repeat them in the same words, to the end that the devotees\nof progress may see that there is something that never dies. Whosoever\nrepeats the \"Vanity of vanities\" of Ecclesiastes or the lamentations of\nJob, even though without changing a letter, having first experienced\nthem in his soul, performs a work of admonition. Need is to repeat\nwithout ceasing the _memento mori_.\n\n\"But to what end?\" you will ask. Even though it be only to the end that\nsome people should be irritated and should see that these things are not\ndead and, so long as men exist, cannot die; to the end that they should\nbe convinced that to-day, in the twentieth century, all the bygone\ncenturies and all of them alive, are still subsisting. When a supposed\nerror reappears, it must be, believe me, that it has not ceased to be\ntrue in part, just as when one who was dead reappears, it must be that\nhe was not wholly dead.\n\nYes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and\nexpress; that many others feel it to-day, although they keep silence\nabout it. Why do I not keep silence about it too? Well, for the very\nreason that most of those who feel it are silent about it; and yet,\nthough they are silent, they obey in silence that inner voice. And I do\nnot keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must\nnot be spoken, the abomination of abominations--_infandum_--and I\nbelieve that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must\nnot be spoken. But if it leads to nothing? Even if it should lead only\nto irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth is\nconsolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them and\nmaking them say: Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence to\nbetter purpose!... Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what I\nsay, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right--and being\nright is such a little thing!--but that I feel what I say and I know\nwhat I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking in\nreason than to have too much of it.\n\nAnd the reader who perseveres in reading me will also see how out of\nthis abyss of despair hope may arise, and how this critical position may\nbe the well-spring of human, profoundly human, action and effort, and of\nsolidarity and even of progress. He will see its pragmatic\njustification. And he will see how, in order to work, and to work\nefficaciously and morally, there is no need of either of these two\nconflicting certainties, either that of faith or that of reason, and how\nstill less is there any need--this never under any circumstances--to\nshirk the problem of the immortality of the soul, or to distort it\nidealistically--that is to say, hypocritically. The reader will see how\nthis uncertainty, with the suffering that accompanies it, and the\nfruitless struggle to escape from it, may be and is a basis for action\nand morals.\n\nAnd in the fact that it serves as a basis for action and morals, this\nfeeling of uncertainty and the inward struggle between reason on the one\nhand and faith and the passionate longing for eternal life on the other,\nshould find their justification in the eyes of the pragmatist. But it\nmust be clearly stated that I do not adduce this practical consequence\nin order to justify the feeling, but merely because I encounter it in my\ninward experience. I neither desire to seek, nor ought I to seek, any\njustification for this state of inward struggle and uncertainty and\nlonging; it is a fact and that suffices. And if anyone finding himself\nin this state, in the depth of the abyss, fails to find there motives\nfor and incentives to life and action, and concludes by committing\nbodily or spiritual suicide, whether he kills himself or he abandons all\nco-operation with his fellows in human endeavour, it will not be I who\nwill pass censure upon him. And apart from the fact that the evil\nconsequences of a doctrine, or rather those which we call evil, only\nprove, I repeat, that the doctrine is disastrous for our desires, but\nnot that it is false in itself, the consequences themselves depend not\nso much upon the doctrine as upon him who deduces them. The same\nprinciple may furnish one man with grounds for action and another man\nwith grounds for abstaining from action, it may lead one man to direct\nhis effort towards a certain end and another man towards a directly\nopposite end. For the truth is that our doctrines are usually only the\njustification _a posteriori_ of our conduct, or else they are our way of\ntrying to explain that conduct to ourselves.\n\nMan, in effect, is unwilling to remain in ignorance of the motives of\nhis own conduct. And just as a man who has been led to perform a certain\naction by hypnotic suggestion will afterwards invent reasons which would\njustify it and make it appear logical to himself and others, being\nunaware all the time of the real cause of his action, so every man--for\nsince \"life is a dream\" every man is in a condition of hypnotism--seeks\nto find reasons for his conduct. And if the pieces on a chessboard were\nendowed with consciousness, they would probably have little difficulty\nin ascribing their moves to freewill--that is to say, they would claim\nfor them a finalist rationality. And thus it comes about that every\nphilosophic theory serves to explain and justify an ethic, a doctrine of\nconduct, which has its real origin in the inward moral feeling of the\nauthor of the theory. But he who harbours this feeling may possibly\nhimself have no clear consciousness of its true reason or cause.\n\nConsequently, if my reason, which is in a certain sense a part of the\nreason of all my brothers in humanity in time and space, teaches me this\nabsolute scepticism in respect of what concerns my longing for\nnever-ending life, I think that I can assume that my feeling of life,\nwhich is the essence of life itself, my vitality, my boundless appetite\nfor living and my abhorrence of dying, my refusal to submit to\ndeath--that it is this which suggests to me the doctrines with which I\ntry to counter-check the working of the reason. Have these doctrines an\nobjective value? someone will ask me, and I shall answer that I do not\nunderstand what this objective value of a doctrine is. I will not say\nthat the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am\nabout to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to\nsay that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires\nthese doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in\nstrengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when\nit was all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work and, above\nall, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason\nor against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die\nout, I die out altogether, then I shall not have died out of\nmyself--that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human\ndestiny will have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my\nheart, I will not abdicate from life--life will be wrested from me.\n\nTo have recourse to those, ambiguous words, \"optimism\" and \"pessimism,\"\ndoes not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very\ncontrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a\ndoctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and\nthe so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe,\non the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatest\nof all, have been men of despair and that by despair they have\naccomplished their mighty works. Apart from this, however, and accepting\nin all their ambiguity these denominations of optimism and pessimism,\nthat there exists a certain transcendental pessimism which may be the\nbegetter of a temporal and terrestrial optimism, is a matter that I\npropose to develop in the following part of this treatise.\n\nVery different, well I know, is the attitude of our progressives, the\npartisans of \"the central current of contemporary European thought\"; but\nI cannot bring myself to believe that these individuals do not\nvoluntarily close their eyes to the grand problem of existence and that,\nin endeavouring to stifle this feeling of the tragedy of life, they\nthemselves are not living a lie.\n\nThe foregoing reflections are a kind of practical summary of the\ncriticism developed in the first six chapters of this treatise, a kind\nof definition of the practical position to which such a criticism is\ncapable of leading whosoever will not renounce life and will not\nrenounce reason and who is compelled to live and act between these upper\nand nether millstones which grind upon the soul. The reader who follows\nme further is now aware that I am about to carry him into the region of\nthe imagination, of imagination not destitute of reason, for without\nreason nothing subsists, but of imagination founded on feeling. And as\nregards its truth, the real truth, that which is independent of\nourselves, beyond the reach of our logic and of our heart--of this truth\nwho knows aught?\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[31] See Troeltsch, _Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kultur\nder Gegenwart_ series.\n\n[32] _Die Analyse der Empfindigungen und das Verh\u00e4ltniss des Physischen\nzum Psychischen_, i., \u00a7 12, note.\n\n[33] I have left the original expression here, almost without\ntranslating it--_Existents-Consequents_. It means the existential or\npractical, not the purely rational or logical, consequence. (Author's\nnote.)\n\n[34] Albrecht Ritschl: _Geschichte des Pietismus_, ii., Abt. i., Bonn,\n1884, p. 251.\n\n[35] Thou art the cause of my suffering, O non-existing God, for if Thou\ndidst exist, then should I also really exist.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nLOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY\n\n    CAIN: Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn\n          To anticipate my immortality.\n\n    LUCIFER: Thou didst before I came upon thee.\n\n    CAIN:                                       How?\n\n    LUCIFER: By suffering.\n\n                BYRON: _Cain_, Act II., Scene I.\n\n\nThe most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers of\nmine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent of\ndisillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine\nagainst death, for it is death's brother.\n\n    _Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte\n    Ingener\u00f3 la sorte_,\n\nas Leopardi sang.\n\nLove seeks with fury, through the medium of the beloved, something\nbeyond, and since it finds it not, it despairs.\n\nWhenever we speak of love there is always present in our memory the idea\nof sexual love, the love between man and woman, whose end is the\nperpetuation of the human race upon the earth. Hence it is that we never\nsucceed in reducing love either to a purely intellectual or to a purely\nvolitional element, putting aside that part in it which belongs to the\nfeeling, or, if you like, to the senses. For, in its essence, love is\nneither idea nor volition; rather it is desire, feeling; it is something\ncarnal in spirit itself. Thanks to love, we feel all that spirit has of\nflesh in it.\n\nSexual love is the generative type of every other love. In love and by\nlove we seek to perpetuate ourselves, and we perpetuate ourselves on the\nearth only on condition that we die, that we yield up our life to\nothers. The humblest forms of animal life, the lowest of living beings,\nmultiply by dividing themselves, by splitting into two, by ceasing to be\nthe unit which they previously formed.\n\nBut when at last the vitality of the being that multiplies itself by\ndivision is exhausted, the species must renew the source of life from\ntime to time by means of the union of two wasting individuals, by means\nof what is called, among protozoaria, conjugation. They unite in order\nto begin dividing again with more vigour. And every act of generation\nconsists in a being's ceasing to be what it was, either wholly or in\npart, in a splitting up, in a partial death. To live is to give oneself,\nto perpetuate oneself, and to perpetuate oneself and to give oneself is\nto die. The supreme delight of begetting is perhaps nothing but a\nforetaste of death, the eradication of our own vital essence. We unite\nwith another, but it is to divide ourselves; this most intimate embrace\nis only a most intimate sundering. In its essence, the delight of sexual\nlove, the genetic spasm, is a sensation of resurrection, of renewing our\nlife in another, for only in others can we renew our life and so\nperpetuate ourselves.\n\nWithout doubt there is something tragically destructive in the essence\nof love, as it presents itself to us in its primitive animal form, in\nthe unconquerable instinct which impels the male and the female to mix\ntheir being in a fury of conjunction. The same impulse that joins their\nbodies, separates, in a certain sense, their souls; they hate one\nanother, while they embrace, no less than they love, and above all they\ncontend with one another, they contend for a third life, which as yet is\nwithout life. Love is a contention, and there are animal species in\nwhich the male maltreats the female in his union with her, and other in\nwhich the female devours the male after being fertilized by him.\n\nIt has been said that love is a mutual selfishness; and, in fact, each\none of the lovers seeks to possess the other, and in seeking his own\nperpetuation through the instrumentality of the other, though without\nbeing at the time conscious of it or purposing it, he thereby seeks his\nown enjoyment. Each one of the lovers is an immediate instrument of\nenjoyment and a mediate instrument of perpetuation, for the other. And\nthus they are tyrants and slaves, each one at once the tyrant and slave\nof the other.\n\nIs there really anything strange in the fact that the deepest religious\nfeeling has condemned carnal love and exalted virginity? Avarice, said\nthe Apostle, is the root of all evil, and the reason is because avarice\ntakes riches, which are only a means, for an end; and therein lies the\nessence of sin, in taking means for ends, in not recognizing or in\ndisesteeming the end. And since it takes enjoyment for the end, whereas\nit is only the means, and not perpetuation, which is the true end, what\nis carnal love but avarice? And it is possible that there are some who\npreserve their virginity in order the better to perpetuate themselves,\nand in order to perpetuate something more human than the flesh.\n\nFor it is the suffering flesh, it is suffering, it is death, that lovers\nperpetuate upon the earth. Love is at once the brother, son, and father\nof death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter. And thus it is that\nin the depth of love there is a depth of eternal despair, out of which\nspring hope and consolation. For out of this carnal and primitive love\nof which I have been speaking, out of this love of the whole body with\nall its senses, which is the animal origin of human society, out of this\nloving-fondness, rises spiritual and sorrowful love.\n\nThis other form of love, this spiritual love, is born of sorrow, is\nborn of the death of carnal love, is born also of the feeling of\ncompassion and protection which parents feel in the presence of a\nstricken child. Lovers never attain to a love of self abandonment, of\ntrue fusion of soul and not merely of body, until the heavy pestle of\nsorrow has bruised their hearts and crushed them in the same mortar of\nsuffering. Sensual love joined their bodies but disjoined their souls;\nit kept their souls strangers to one another; but of this love is\nbegotten a fruit of their flesh--a child. And perchance this child,\nbegotten in death, falls sick and dies. Then it comes to pass that over\nthe fruit of their carnal fusion and spiritual separation and\nestrangement, their bodies now separated and cold with sorrow but united\nby sorrow their souls, the lovers, the parents, join in an embrace of\ndespair, and then is born, of the death of the child of their flesh, the\ntrue spiritual love. Or rather, when the bond of flesh which united them\nis broken, they breathe with a sigh of relief. For men love one another\nwith a spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrow\ntogether, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground\nbowed beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they\nknow one another and feel one another, and feel with one another in\ntheir common anguish, they pity one another and love one another. For to\nlove is to pity; and if bodies are united by pleasure, souls are united\nby pain.\n\nAnd this is felt with still more clearness and force in the seeding, the\ntaking root, and the blossoming of one of those tragic loves which are\ndoomed to contend with the diamond-hard laws of Destiny--one of those\nloves which are born out of due time and season, before or after the\nmoment, or out of the normal mode in which the world, which is custom,\nwould have been willing to welcome them. The more barriers Destiny and\nthe world and its law interpose between the lovers, the stronger is the\nimpulse that urges them towards one another, and their happiness in\nloving one another turns to bitterness, and their unhappiness in not\nbeing able to love freely and openly grows heavier, and they pity one\nanother from the bottom of their hearts; and this common pity, which is\ntheir common misery and their common happiness, gives fire and fuel to\ntheir love. And they suffer their joy, enjoying their suffering. And\nthey establish their love beyond the confines of the world, and the\nstrength of this poor love suffering beneath the yoke of Destiny gives\nthem intuition of another world where there is no other law than the\nliberty of love--another world where there are no barriers because there\nis no flesh. For nothing inspires us more with hope and faith in another\nworld than the impossibility of our love truly fructifying in this world\nof flesh and of appearances.\n\nAnd what is maternal love but compassion for the weak, helpless,\ndefenceless infant that craves the mother's milk and the comfort of her\nbreast? And woman's love is all maternal.\n\nTo love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most.\nMen aflame with a burning charity towards their neighbours are thus\nenkindled because they have touched the depth of their own misery, their\nown apparentiality, their own nothingness, and then, turning their newly\nopened eyes upon their fellows, they have seen that they also are\nmiserable, apparential, condemned to nothingness, and they have pitied\nthem and loved them.\n\nMan yearns to be loved, or, what is the same thing, to be pitied. Man\nwishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. The\nroadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations is\nsomething more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. True\nalms is pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the material\nhardships of life. The beggar shows little gratitude for alms thrown to\nhim by one who hurries past with averted face; he is more grateful to\nhim who pities him but does not help than to him who helps but does not\npity, although from another point of view he may prefer the latter.\nObserve with what satisfaction he relates his woes to one who is moved\nby the story of them. He desires to be pitied, to be loved.\n\nWoman's love, above all, as I have remarked, is always compassionate in\nits essence--maternal. Woman yields herself to the lover because she\nfeels that his desire makes him suffer. Isabel had compassion upon\nLorenzo, Juliet upon Romeo, Francesca upon Paolo. Woman seems to say:\n\"Come, poor one, thou shalt not suffer so for my sake!\" And therefore is\nher love more loving and purer than that of man, braver and more\nenduring.\n\nPity, then, is the essence of human spiritual love, of the love that is\nconscious of being love, of the love that is not purely animal, of the\nlove, in a word, of a rational person. Love pities, and pities most when\nit loves most.\n\nReversing the terms of the adage _nihil volitum quin pr\u00e6cognitum_, I\nhave told you that _nihil cognitum quin pr\u00e6volitum_, that we know\nnothing save what we have first, in one way or another, desired; and it\nmay even be added that we can know nothing well save what we love, save\nwhat we pity.\n\nAs love grows, this restless yearning to pierce to the uttermost and to\nthe innermost, so it continually embraces all that it sees, and pities\nall that it embraces. According as you turn inwards and penetrate more\ndeeply into yourself, you will discover more and more your own\nemptiness, that you are not all that you are not, that you are not what\nyou would wish to be, that you are, in a word, only a nonentity. And in\ntouching your own nothingness, in not feeling your permanent base, in\nnot reaching your own infinity, still less your own eternity, you will\nhave a whole-hearted pity for yourself, and you will burn with a\nsorrowful love for yourself--a love that will consume your so-called\nself-love, which is merely a species of sensual self-delectation, the\nself-enjoyment, as it were, of the flesh of your soul.\n\nSpiritual self-love, the pity that one feels for oneself, may perhaps be\ncalled egotism; but nothing could be more opposed to ordinary egoism.\nFor this love or pity for yourself, this intense despair, bred of the\nconsciousness that just as before you were born you were not, so after\nyour death you will cease to be, will lead you to pity--that is, to\nlove--all your fellows and brothers in this world of appearance, these\nunhappy shadows who pass from nothingness to nothingness, these sparks\nof consciousness which shine for a moment in the infinite and eternal\ndarkness. And this compassionate feeling for other men, for your\nfellows, beginning with those most akin to you, those with whom you\nlive, will expand into a universal pity for all living things, and\nperhaps even for things that have not life but merely existence. That\ndistant star which shines up there in the night will some day be\nquenched and will turn to dust and will cease to shine and cease to\nexist. And so, too, it will be with the whole of the star-strewn\nheavens. Unhappy heavens!\n\nAnd if it is grievous to be doomed one day to cease to be, perhaps it\nwould be more grievous still to go on being always oneself, and no more\nthan oneself, without being able to be at the same time other, without\nbeing able to be at the same time everything else, without being able to\nbe all.\n\nIf you look at the universe as closely and as inwardly as you are able\nto look--that is to say, if you look within yourself; if you not only\ncontemplate but feel all things in your own consciousness, upon which\nall things have traced their painful impression--you will arrive at the\nabyss of the tedium, not merely of life, but of something more: at the\ntedium of existence, at the bottomless pit of the vanity of vanities.\nAnd thus you will come to pity all things; you will arrive at universal\nlove.\n\nIn order to love everything, in order to pity everything, human and\nextra-human, living and non-living, you must feel everything within\nyourself, you must personalize everything. For everything that it loves,\neverything that it pities, love personalizes. We only pity--that is to\nsay, we only love--that which is like ourselves and in so far as it is\nlike ourselves, and the more like it is the more we love; and thus our\npity for things, and with it our love, grows in proportion as we\ndiscover in them the likenesses which they have with ourselves. Or,\nrather, it is love itself, which of itself tends to grow, that reveals\nthese resemblances to us. If I am moved to pity and love the luckless\nstar that one day will vanish from the face of heaven, it is because\nlove, pity, makes me feel that it has a consciousness, more or less dim,\nwhich makes it suffer because it is no more than a star, and a star that\nis doomed one day to cease to be. For all consciousness is consciousness\nof death and of suffering.\n\nConsciousness (_conscientia_) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling,\nand co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Only\nby personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love is\nso great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves\neverything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the total\nAll, that the Universe, is also a Person possessing a Consciousness, a\nConsciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, and\ntherefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe,\nwhich love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call\nGod. And thus the soul pities God and feels itself pitied by Him; loves\nHim and feels itself loved by Him, sheltering its misery in the bosom of\nthe eternal and infinite misery, which, in eternalizing itself and\ninfinitizing itself, is the supreme happiness itself.\n\nGod is, then, the personalization of the All; He is the eternal and\ninfinite Consciousness of the Universe--Consciousness taken captive by\nmatter and struggling to free himself from it. We personalize the All\nin order to save ourselves from Nothingness; and the only mystery really\nmysterious is the mystery of suffering.\n\nSuffering is the path of consciousness, and by it living beings arrive\nat the possession of self-consciousness. For to possess consciousness of\noneself, to possess personality, is to know oneself and to feel oneself\ndistinct from other beings, and this feeling of distinction is only\nreached through an act of collision, through suffering more or less\nsevere, through the sense of one's own limits. Consciousness of oneself\nis simply consciousness of one's own limitation. I feel myself when I\nfeel that I am not others; to know and to feel the extent of my being is\nto know at what point I cease to be, the point beyond which I no longer\nam.\n\nAnd how do we know that we exist if we do not suffer, little or much?\nHow can we turn upon ourselves, acquire reflective consciousness, save\nby suffering? When we enjoy ourselves we forget ourselves, forget that\nwe exist; we pass over into another, an alien being, we alienate\nourselves. And we become centred in ourselves again, we return to\nourselves, only by suffering.\n\n           _Nessun maggior dolore\n    che ricordarsi del tempo felice\n    nella miseria_\n\nare the words that Dante puts into the mouth of Francesca da Rimini\n(_Inferno_, v., 121-123); but if there is no greater sorrow than the\nrecollection in adversity of happy bygone days, there is, on the other\nhand, no pleasure in remembering adversity in days of prosperity.\n\n\"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to\nachieve nothing\" (_polla phroneoita m\u00eadenos chrateein_)--so\nHerodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book\nix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can\nembrace everything, or almost everything; with the will nothing, or\nalmost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness--no! not if this\ncontemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our\nknowledge and our power pity arises.\n\nWe pity what is like ourselves, and the greater and clearer our sense of\nits likeness with ourselves, the greater our pity. And if we may say\nthat this likeness provokes our pity, it may also be maintained that it\nis our reservoir of pity, eager to diffuse itself over everything, that\nmakes us discover the likeness of things with ourselves, the common bond\nthat unites us with them in suffering.\n\nOur own struggle to acquire, preserve, and increase our own\nconsciousness makes us discover in the endeavours and movements and\nrevolutions of all things a struggle to acquire, preserve, and increase\nconsciousness, to which everything tends. Beneath the actions of those\nmost akin to myself, of my fellow-men, I feel--or, rather, I co-feel--a\nstate of consciousness similar to that which lies beneath my own\nactions. On hearing my brother give a cry of pain, my own pain awakes\nand cries in the depth of my consciousness. And in the same way I feel\nthe pain of animals, and the pain of a tree when one of its branches is\nbeing cut off, and I feel it most when my imagination is alive, for the\nimagination is the faculty of intuition, of inward vision.\n\nProceeding from ourselves, from our own human consciousness, the only\nconsciousness which we feel from within and in which feeling is\nidentical with being, we attribute some sort of consciousness, more or\nless dim, to all living things, and even to the stones themselves, for\nthey also live. And the evolution of organic beings is simply a struggle\nto realize fullness of consciousness through suffering, a continual\naspiration to be others without ceasing to be themselves, to break and\nyet to preserve their proper limits.\n\nAnd this process of personalization or subjectivization of everything\nexternal, phenomenal, or objective, is none other than the vital\nprocess of philosophy in the contest of life against reason and of\nreason against life. We have already indicated it in the preceding\nchapter, and we must now confirm it by developing it further.\n\nGiovanni Baptista Vico, with his profound esthetic penetration into the\nsoul of antiquity, saw that the spontaneous philosophy of man was to\nmake of himself the norm of the universe, guided by the _instinto\nd'animazione_. Language, necessarily anthropomorphic, mythopeic,\nengenders thought. \"Poetic wisdom, which was the primitive wisdom of\npaganism,\" says Vico in his _Scienza Nuova_, \"must have begun with a\nmetaphysic, not reasoned and abstract, like that of modern educated men,\nbut felt and imagined, such as must have been that of primitive men.\nThis was their own poetry, which with them was inborn, an innate\nfaculty, for nature had furnished them with such feelings and such\nimaginations, a faculty born of the ignorance of causes, and therefore\nbegetting a universal sense of wonder, for knowing nothing they\nmarvelled greatly at everything. This poetry had a divine origin, for,\nwhile they invented the causes of things out of their own imagination,\nat the same time they regarded these causes with feelings of wonder as\ngods. In this way the first men of the pagan peoples, as children of the\ngrowing human race, fashioned things out of their ideas.... This nature\nof human things has bequeathed that eternal property which Tacitus\nelucidated with a fine phrase when he said, not without reason, that men\nin their terror _fingunt simul creduntque_.\"\n\nAnd then, passing from the age of imagination, Vico proceeds to show us\nthe age of reason, this age of ours in which the mind, even the popular\nmind, is too remote from the senses, \"with so many abstractions of which\nall languages are full,\" an age in which \"the ability to conceive an\nimmense image of such a personage as we call sympathetic Nature is\ndenied to us, for though the phrase 'Dame Nature' may be on our lips,\nthere is nothing in our minds that corresponds with it, our minds being\noccupied with the false, the non-existent.\" \"To-day,\" Vico continues,\n\"it is naturally impossible for us to enter into the vast imagination of\nthese primitive men.\" But is this certain? Do not we continue to live by\nthe creations of their imagination, embodied for ever in the language\nwith which we think, or, rather, the language which thinks in us?\n\nIt was in vain that Comte declared that human thought had already\nemerged from the age of theology and was now emerging from the age of\nmetaphysics into the age of positivism; the three ages coexist, and\nalthough antagonistic they lend one another mutual support.\nHigh-sounding positivism, whenever it ceases to deny and begins to\naffirm something, whenever it becomes really positive, is nothing but\nmetaphysics; and metaphysics, in its essence, is always theology, and\ntheology is born of imagination yoked to the service of life, of life\nwith its craving for immortality.\n\nOur feeling of the world, upon which is based our understanding of it,\nis necessarily anthropomorphic and mythopeic. When rationalism dawned\nwith Thales of Miletus, this philosopher abandoned Oceanus and Thetis,\ngods and the progenitors of gods, and attributed the origin of things to\nwater; but this water was a god in disguise. Beneath nature (_phhysist_)\nand the world (_khosmos_), mythical and anthropomorphic creations\nthrobbed with life. They were implicated in the structure of language\nitself. Xenophon tells us (_Memorabilia_, i., i., 6-9) that among\nphenomena Socrates distinguished between those which were within the\nscope of human study and those which the gods had reserved for\nthemselves, and that he execrated the attempt of Anaxagoras to explain\neverything rationally. His contemporary, Hippocrates, regarded diseases\nas of divine origin, and Plato believed that the sun and stars were\nanimated gods with their souls (_Philebus_, cap. xvi., _Laws_, x.), and\nonly permitted astronomical investigation so long as it abstained from\nblasphemy against these gods. And Aristotle in his _Physics_ tells us\nthat Zeus rains not in order that the corn may grow, but by necessity\n(_ex anharch\u00east_). They tried to mechanize and rationalize God, but God\nrebelled against them.\n\nAnd what is the concept of God, a concept continually renewed because\nspringing out of the eternal feeling of God in man, but the eternal\nprotest of life against reason, the unconquerable instinct of\npersonalization? And what is the notion of substance itself but the\nobjectivization of that which is most subjective--that is, of the will\nor consciousness? For consciousness, even before it knows itself as\nreason, feels itself, is palpable to itself, is most in harmony with\nitself, as will, and as will not to die. Hence that rhythm, of which we\nspoke, in the history of thought. Positivism inducted us into an age of\nrationalism--that is to say, of materialism, mechanism, or mortalism;\nand behold now the return of vitalism, of spiritualism. What was the\neffort of pragmatism but an effort to restore faith in the human\nfinality of the universe? What is the effort of a Bergson, for example,\nespecially in his work on creative evolution, but an attempt to\nre-integrate the personal God and eternal consciousness? Life never\nsurrenders.\n\nAnd it avails us nothing to seek to repress this mythopeic or\nanthropomorphic process and to rationalize our thought, as if we thought\nonly for the sake of thinking and knowing, and not for the sake of\nliving. The very language with which we think prevents us from so doing.\nLanguage, the substance of thought, is a system of metaphors with a\nmythic and anthropomorphic base. And to construct a purely rational\nphilosophy it would be necessary to construct it by means of algebraic\nformulas or to create a new language for it, an inhuman language--that\nis to say, one inapt for the needs of life--as indeed Dr. Richard\nAvenarius, professor of philosophy at Z\u00fcrich, attempted to do in his\n_Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_), in order to\navoid preconceptions. And this rigorous attempt of Avenarius, the chief\nof the critics of experience, ends strictly in pure scepticism. He\nhimself says at the end of the Prologue to the work above mentioned:\n\"The childish confidence that it is granted to us to discover truth has\nlong since disappeared; as we progress we become aware of the\ndifficulties that lie in the way of its discovery and of the limitation\nof our powers. And what is the end?... If we could only succeed in\nseeing clearly into ourselves!\"\n\nSeeing clearly! seeing clearly! Clear vision would be only attainable by\na pure thinker who used algebra instead of language and was able to\ndivest himself of his own humanity--that is to say, by an unsubstantial,\nmerely objective being: a no-being, in short. In spite of reason we are\ncompelled to think with life, and in spite of life we are compelled to\nrationalize thought.\n\nThis animation, this personification, interpenetrates our very\nknowledge. \"Who is it that sends the rain? Who is it that thunders?\" old\nStrepsiades asks of Socrates in _The Clouds_ of Aristophanes, and the\nphilosopher replies: \"Not Zeus, but the clouds.\" \"But,\" questions\nStrepsiades, \"who but Zeus makes the clouds sweep along?\" to which\nSocrates answers: \"Not a bit of it; it is atmospheric whirligig.\"\n\"Whirligig?\" muses Strepsiades; \"I never thought of that--that Zeus is\ngone and that Son Whirligig rules now in his stead.\" And so the old man\ngoes on personifying and animating the whirlwind, as if the whirlwind\nwere now a king, not without consciousness of his kingship. And in\nexchanging a Zeus for a whirlwind--God for matter, for example--we all\ndo the same thing. And the reason is because philosophy does not work\nupon the objective reality which we perceive with the senses, but upon\nthe complex of ideas, images, notions, perceptions, etc., embodied in\nlanguage and transmitted to us with our language by our ancestors. That\nwhich we call the world, the objective world, is a social tradition. It\nis given to us ready made.\n\nMan does not submit to being, as consciousness, alone in the Universe,\nnor to being merely one objective phenomenon the more. He wishes to save\nhis vital or passional subjectivity by attributing life, personality,\nspirit, to the whole Universe. In order to realize his wish he has\ndiscovered God and substance; God and substance continually reappear in\nhis thought cloaked in different disguises. Because we are conscious, we\nfeel that we exist, which is quite another thing from knowing that we\nexist, and we wish to feel the existence of everything else; we wish\nthat of all the other individual things each one should also be an \"I.\"\n\nThe most consistent, although the most incongruous and vacillating,\nidealism, that of Berkeley, who denied the existence of matter, of\nsomething inert and extended and passive, as the cause of our sensations\nand the substratum of external phenomena, is in its essence nothing but\nan absolute spiritualism or dynamism, the supposition that every\nsensation comes to us, causatively, from another spirit--that is, from\nanother consciousness. And his doctrine has a certain affinity with\nthose of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. The former's doctrine of the Will\nand the latter's doctrine of the Unconscious are already implied in the\nBerkeleyan theory that to be is to be perceived. To which must be added:\nand to cause others to perceive what is. Thus the old adage _operari\nsequitur esse_ (action follows being) must be modified by saying that to\nbe is to act, and only that which acts--the active--exists, and in so\nfar as it acts.\n\nAs regards Schopenhauer, there is no need to endeavour to show that the\nwill, which he posits as the essence of things, proceeds from\nconsciousness. And it is only necessary to read his book on the Will in\nNature to see how he attributed a certain spirit and even a certain\npersonality to the plants themselves. And this doctrine of his carried\nhim logically to pessimism, for the true property and most inward\nfunction of the will is to suffer. The will is a force which feels\nitself--that is, which suffers. And, someone will add, which enjoys. But\nthe capacity to enjoy is impossible without the capacity to suffer; and\nthe faculty of enjoyment is one with that of pain. Whosoever does not\nsuffer does not enjoy, just as whosoever is insensible to cold is\ninsensible to heat.\n\nAnd it is also quite logical that Schopenhauer, who deduced pessimism\nfrom the voluntarist doctrine or doctrine of universal personalization,\nshould have deduced from both of these that the foundation of morals is\ncompassion. Only his lack of the social and historical sense, his\ninability to feel that humanity also is a person, although a collective\none, his egoism, in short, prevented him from feeling God, prevented him\nfrom individualizing and personalizing the total and collective\nWill--the Will of the Universe.\n\nOn the other hand, it is easy to understand his aversion from purely\nempirical, evolutionist, or transformist doctrines, such as those set\nforth in the works of Lamarck and Darwin which came to his notice.\nJudging Darwin's theory solely by an extensive extract in _The Times_,\nhe described it, in a letter to Adam Louis von Doss (March 1, 1860), as\n\"downright empiricism\" _(platter Empirismus)_. In fact, for a\nvoluntarist like Schopenhauer, a theory so sanely and cautiously\nempirical and rational as that of Darwin left out of account the inward\nforce, the essential motive, of evolution. For what is, in effect, the\nhidden force, the ultimate agent, which impels organisms to perpetuate\nthemselves and to fight for their persistence and propagation?\nSelection, adaptation, heredity, these are only external conditions.\nThis inner, essential force has been called will on the supposition that\nthere exists also in other beings that which we feel in ourselves as a\nfeeling of will, the impulse to be everything, to be others as well as\nourselves yet without ceasing to be what we are. And it may be said\nthat this force is the divine in us, that it is God Himself who works in\nus because He suffers in us.\n\nAnd sympathy teaches us to discover this force, this aspiration towards\nconsciousness, in all things. It moves and activates the most minute\nliving creatures; it moves and activates, perhaps, the very cells of our\nown bodily organism, which is a confederation, more or less solidary, of\nliving beings; it moves the very globules of our blood. Our life is\ncomposed of lives, our vital aspiration of aspirations existing perhaps\nin the limbo of subconsciousness. Not more absurd than so many other\ndreams which pass as valid theories is the belief that our cells, our\nglobules, may possess something akin to a rudimentary cellular, globular\nconsciousness or basis of consciousness. Or that they may arrive at\npossessing such consciousness. And since we have given a loose rein to\nthe fancy, we may fancy that these cells may communicate with one\nanother, and that some of them may express their belief that they form\npart of a superior organism endowed with a collective personal\nconsciousness. And more than once in the history of human feeling this\nfancy has been expressed in the surmisal of some philosopher or poet\nthat we men are a kind of globules in the blood of a Supreme Being, who\npossesses his own personal collective consciousness, the consciousness\nof the Universe.\n\nPerhaps the immense Milky Way which on clear nights we behold stretching\nacross the heavens, this vast encircling ring in which our planetary\nsystem is itself but a molecule, is in its turn but a cell in the\nUniverse, in the Body of God. All the cells of our body combine and\nco-operate in maintaining and kindling by their activity our\nconsciousness, our soul; and if the consciousness or the souls of all\nthese cells entered completely into our consciousness, into the\ncomposite whole, if I possessed consciousness of all that happens in my\nbodily organism, I should feel the universe happening within myself,\nand perhaps the painful sense of my limitedness would disappear. And if\nall the consciousness of all beings unite in their entirety in the\nuniversal consciousness, this consciousness--that is to say, God--is\nall.\n\nIn every instant obscure consciousnesses, elementary souls, are born and\ndie within us, and their birth and death constitute our life. And their\nsudden and violent death constitutes our pain. And in like manner, in\nthe heart of God consciousnesses are born and die--but do they die?--and\ntheir births and deaths constitute His life.\n\nIf there is a Universal and Supreme Consciousness, I am an idea in it;\nand is it possible for any idea in this Supreme Consciousness to be\ncompletely blotted out? After I have died, God will go on remembering\nme, and to be remembered by God, to have my consciousness sustained by\nthe Supreme Consciousness, is not that, perhaps, to be?\n\nAnd if anyone should say that God has made the universe, it may be\nrejoined that so also our soul has made our body as much as, if not more\nthan, it has been made by it--if, indeed, there be a soul.\n\nWhen pity, love, reveals to us the whole universe striving to gain, to\npreserve, and to enlarge its consciousness, striving more and more to\nsaturate itself with consciousness, feeling the pain of the discords\nwhich are produced within it, pity reveals to us the likeness of the\nwhole universe with ourselves; it reveals to us that it is human, and it\nleads us to discover our Father in it, of whose flesh we are flesh; love\nleads us to personalize the whole of which we form a part.\n\nTo say that God is eternally producing things is fundamentally the same\nas saying that things are eternally producing God. And the belief in a\npersonal and spiritual God is based on the belief in our own personality\nand spirituality. Because we feel ourselves to be consciousness, we\nfeel God to be consciousness--that is to say, a person; and because we\ndesire ardently that our consciousness shall live and be independently\nof the body, we believe that the divine person lives and exists\nindependently of the universe, that his state of consciousness is _ad\nextra_.\n\nNo doubt logicians will come forward and confront us with the evident\nrational difficulties which this involves; but we have already stated\nthat, although presented under logical forms, the content of all this is\nnot strictly rational. Every rational conception of God is in itself\ncontradictory. Faith in God is born of love for God--we believe that God\nexists by force of wishing that He may exist, and it is born also,\nperhaps, of God's love for us. Reason does not prove to us that God\nexists, but neither does it prove that He cannot exist.\n\nBut of this conception of faith in God as the personalization of the\nuniverse we shall have more to say presently.\n\nAnd recalling what has been said in another part of this work, we may\nsay that material things, in so far as they are known to us, issue into\nknowledge through the agency of hunger, and out of hunger issues the\nsensible or material universe in which we conglomerate these things; and\nthat ideal things issue out of love, and out of love issues God, in whom\nwe conglomerate these ideal things as in the Consciousness of the\nUniverse. It is social consciousness, the child of love, of the instinct\nof perpetuation, that leads us to socialize everything, to see society\nin everything, and that shows us at last that all Nature is really an\ninfinite Society. For my part, the feeling that Nature is a society has\ntaken hold of me hundreds of times in walking through the woods\npossessed with a sense of solidarity with the oaks, a sense of their dim\nawareness of my presence.\n\nImagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate and\nanthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makes\neverything identical with man.[36] And the work of man is to\nsupernaturalize Nature--that is to say, to make it divine by making it\nhuman, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action of\nreason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize.\n\nAnd just as a fruitful union is consummated between the individual--who\nis, in a certain sense, a society--and society, which is also an\nindividual--the two being so inseparable from one another that it is\nimpossible to say where the one begins and the other ends, for they are\nrather two aspects of a single essence--so also the spirit, the social\nelement, which by relating us to others makes us conscious, unites with\nmatter, the individual and individualizing element; similarly, reason or\nintelligence and imagination embrace in a mutually fruitful union, and\nthe Universe merges into one with God.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIs all this true? And what is truth? I in my turn will ask, as Pilate\nasked--not, however, only to turn away and wash my hands, without\nwaiting for an answer.\n\nIs truth in reason, or above reason, or beneath reason, or outside of\nreason, in some way or another? Is only the rational true? May there not\nbe a reality, by its very nature, unattainable by reason, and perhaps,\nby its very nature, opposed to reason? And how can we know this reality\nif reason alone holds the key to knowledge?\n\nOur desire of living, our need of life, asks that that may be true which\nurges us to self-preservation and self-perpetuation, which sustains man\nand society; it asks that the true water may be that which assuages our\nthirst, and because it assuages it, that the true bread may be that\nwhich satisfies our hunger, because it satisfies it.\n\nThe senses are devoted to the service of the instinct of preservation,\nand everything that satisfies this need of preserving ourselves, even\nthough it does not pass through the senses, is nevertheless a kind of\nintimate penetration of reality in us. Is the process of assimilating\nnutriment perhaps less real than the process of knowing the nutritive\nsubstance? It may be said that to eat a loaf of bread is not the same\nthing as seeing, touching, or tasting it; that in the one case it enters\ninto our body, but not therefore into our consciousness. Is this true?\nDoes not the loaf of bread that I have converted into my flesh and blood\nenter more into my consciousness than the other loaf which I see and\ntouch, and of which I say: \"This is mine\"? And must I refuse objective\nreality to the bread that I have thus converted into my flesh and blood\nand made mine when I only touch it?\n\nThere are some who live by air without knowing it. In the same way, it\nmay be, we live by God and in God--in God the spirit and consciousness\nof society and of the whole Universe, in so far as the Universe is also\na society.\n\nGod is felt only in so far as He is lived; and man does not live by\nbread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God\n(Matt. iv. 4; Deut. viii. 3).\n\nAnd this personalization of the all, of the Universe, to which we are\nled by love, by pity, is the personalization of a person who embraces\nand comprehends within himself the other persons of which he is\ncomposed.\n\nThe only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness.\nFor where there is no consciousness there is no finality, finality\npresupposing a purpose. And, as we shall see, faith in God is based\nsimply upon the vital need of giving finality to existence, of making it\nanswer to a purpose. We need God, not in order to understand the _why_,\nbut in order to feel and sustain the ultimate _wherefore_, to give a\nmeaning to the Universe.\n\nAnd neither ought we to be surprised by the affirmation that this\nconsciousness of the Universe is composed and integrated by the\nconsciousnesses of the beings which form the Universe, by the\nconsciousnesses of all the beings that exist, and that nevertheless it\nremains a personal consciousness distinct from those which compose it.\nOnly thus is it possible to understand how in God we live, move, and\nhave our being. That great visionary, Emanuel Swedenborg, saw or caught\na glimpse of this in his book on Heaven and Hell _(De Coelo et Inferno_,\nlii.), when he tells us: \"An entire angelic society appears sometimes in\nthe form of a single angel, which also it hath been granted me by the\nLord to see. When the Lord Himself appears in the midst of the angels,\nHe doth not appear as encompassed by a multitude, but as a single being\nin angelic form. Hence it is that the Lord in the Word is called an\nangel, and likewise that on entire society is so called. Michael,\nGabriel, and Raphael are nothing but angelical societies, which are so\nnamed from their functions.\"\n\nMay we not perhaps live and love--that is, suffer and pity--in this\nall-enveloping Supreme Person--we, all the persons who suffer and pity\nand all the beings that strive to achieve personality, to acquire\nconsciousness of their suffering and their limitation? And are we not,\nperhaps, ideas of this total Grand Consciousness, which by thinking of\nus as existing confers existence upon us? Does not our existence consist\nin being perceived and felt by God? And, further on, this same visionary\ntells us, under the form of images, that each angel, each society of\nangels, and the whole of heaven comprehensively surveyed, appear in\nhuman form, and in virtue of this human form the Lord rules them as one\nman.\n\n\"God does not think, He creates; He does not exist, He is eternal,\"\nwrote Kierkegaard (_Afslutende uvidens-kabelige Efterskrift_); but\nperhaps it is more exact to say with Mazzini, the mystic of the Italian\ncity, that \"God is great because His thought is action\" (_Ai giovani\nd'ltalia_), because with Him to think is to create, and He gives\nexistence to that which exists in His thought by the mere fact of\nthinking it, and the impossible is the unthinkable by God. Is it not\nwritten in the Scriptures that God creates with His word--that is to\nsay, with His thought--and that by this, by His Word, He made everything\nthat exists? And what God has once made does He ever forget? May it not\nbe that all the thoughts that have ever passed through the Supreme\nConsciousness still subsist therein? In Him, who is eternal, is not all\nexistence eternalized?\n\nOur longing to save consciousness, to give personal and human finality\nto the Universe and to existence, is such that even in the midst of a\nsupreme, an agonizing and lacerating sacrifice, we should still hear the\nvoice that assured us that if our consciousness disappears, it is that\nthe infinite and eternal Consciousness may be enriched thereby, that our\nsouls may serve as nutriment to the Universal Soul. Yes, I enrich God,\nbecause before I existed He did not think of me as existing, because I\nam one more--one more even though among an infinity of others--who,\nhaving really lived, really suffered, and really loved, abide in His\nbosom. It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, to\nmake it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God,\nto wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him,\nyes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist.\nFor to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He\nfirst creates us.[37] It is He who in us is continually creating\nHimself.\n\nWe have created God in order to save the Universe from nothingness, for\nall that is not consciousness and eternal consciousness, conscious of\nits eternity and eternally conscious, is nothing more than appearance.\nThere is nothing truly real save that which feels, suffers, pities,\nloves, and desires, save consciousness; there is nothing substantial but\nconsciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in\norder to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know\nthe why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it. Love is\na contradiction if there is no God.\n\nLet us now consider this idea of God, of the logical God or the Supreme\nReason, and of the vital God or the God of the heart--that is, Supreme\nLove.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[36] _Todo lo humaniza, y aun lo humana_.\n\n[37] In the translation it is impossible to retain the play upon the\nverbs _crear_, to create, and _creer_, to believe: _\"Porque creer en\nDios es en cierto modo crearle, aunque El nos cree antes.\"_--J.E.C.F.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nFROM GOD TO GOD\n\n\nTo affirm that the religious sense is a sense of divinity and that it is\nimpossible without some abuse of the ordinary usages of human language\nto speak of an atheistic religion, is not, I think, to do violence to\nthe truth; although it is clear that everything will depend upon the\nconcept that we form of God, a concept which in its turn depends upon\nthe concept of divinity.\n\nOur proper procedure, in effect, will be to begin with this sense of\ndivinity, before prefixing to the concept of this quality the definite\narticle and the capital letter and so converting it into \"the\nDivinity\"--that is, into God. For man has not deduced the divine from\nGod, but rather he has reached God through the divine.\n\nIn the course of these somewhat wandering but at the same time urgent\nreflections upon the tragic sense of life, I have already alluded to the\n_timor fecit deos_ of Statius with the object of limiting and correcting\nit. It is not my intention to trace yet once again the historical\nprocesses by which peoples have arrived at the consciousness and concept\nof a personal God like the God of Christianity. And I say peoples and\nnot isolated individuals, for if there is any feeling or concept that is\ntruly collective and social it is the feeling and concept of God,\nalthough the individual subsequently individualizes it. Philosophy may,\nand in fact does, possess an individual origin; theology is necessarily\ncollective.\n\nSchleiermacher's theory, which attributes the origin, or rather the\nessence, of the religious sense to the immediate and simple feeling of\ndependency, appears to be the most profound and exact explanation.\nPrimitive man, living in society, feels himself to be dependent upon the\nmysterious forces invisibly environing him; he feels himself to be in\nsocial communion, not only with beings like himself, his fellow-men, but\nwith the whole of Nature, animate and inanimate, which simply means, in\nother words, that he personalizes everything. Not only does he possess a\nconsciousness of the world, but he imagines that the world, like\nhimself, possesses consciousness also. Just as a child talks to his doll\nor his dog as if it understood what he was saying, so the savage\nbelieves that his fetich hears him when he speaks to it, and that the\nangry storm-cloud is aware of him and deliberately pursues him. For the\nnewly born mind of the primitive natural man has not yet wholly severed\nitself from the cords which still bind it to the womb of Nature, neither\nhas it clearly marked out the boundary that separates dreaming from\nwaking, imagination from reality.\n\nThe divine, therefore, was not originally something objective, but was\nrather the subjectivity of consciousness projected exteriorly, the\npersonalization of the world. The concept of divinity arose out of the\nfeeling of divinity, and the feeling of divinity is simply the dim and\nnascent feeling of personality vented upon the outside world. And\nstrictly speaking it is not possible to speak of outside and inside,\nobjective and subjective, when no such distinction was actually felt;\nindeed it is precisely from this lack of distinction that the feeling\nand concept of divinity proceed. The clearer our consciousness of the\ndistinction between the objective and the subjective, the more obscure\nis the feeling of divinity in us.\n\nIt has been said, and very justly so it would appear, that Hellenic\npaganism was not so much polytheistic as pantheistic. I do not know that\nthe belief in a multitude of gods, taking the concept of God in the\nsense in which we understand it to-day, has ever really existed in any\nhuman mind. And if by pantheism is understood the doctrine, not that\neverything and each individual thing is God--a proposition which I find\nunthinkable--but that everything is divine, then it may be said without\nany great abuse of language that paganism was pantheistic. Its gods not\nonly mixed among men but intermixed with them; they begat gods upon\nmortal women and upon goddesses mortal men begat demi-gods. And if\ndemi-gods, that is, demi-men, were believed to exist, it was because the\ndivine and the human were viewed as different aspects of the same\nreality. The divinization of everything was simply its humanization. To\nsay that the sun was a god was equivalent to saying that it was a man, a\nhuman consciousness, more or less, aggrandized and sublimated. And this\nis true of all beliefs from fetichism to Hellenic paganism.\n\nThe real distinction between gods and men consisted in the fact that the\nformer were immortal. A god came to be identical with an immortal man\nand a man was deified, reputed as a god, when it was deemed that at his\ndeath he had not really died. Of certain heroes it was believed that\nthey were alive in the kingdom of the dead. And this is a point of great\nimportance in estimating the value of the concept of the divine.\n\nIn those republics of gods there was always some predominating god, some\nreal monarch. It was through the agency of this divine monarchy that\nprimitive peoples were led from monocultism to monotheism. Hence\nmonarchy and monotheism are twin brethren. Zeus, Jupiter, was in process\nof being converted into an only god, just as Jahw\u00e9 originally one god\namong many others, came to be converted into an only god, first the god\nof the people of Israel, then the god of humanity, and finally the god\nof the whole universe.\n\nLike monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. \"It is only on the march\nand in time of war,\" says Robertson Smith in _The Prophets of\nIsrael_,[38] \"that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central\nauthority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national\norganization, centring in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought\nof mainly as the host of Jehovah. The very name of Israel is martial,\nand means 'God (_El_) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is\nIahw\u00e8 \u00c7eb\u00e4\u00f4th--the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the\nbattlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in\nprimitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in\ntime of peace.\"\n\nGod, the only God, issued, therefore, from man's sense of divinity as a\nwarlike, monarchical and social God. He revealed himself to the people\nas a whole, not to the individual. He was the God of a people and he\njealously exacted that worship should be rendered to him alone. The\ntransition from this monocultism to monotheism was effected largely by\nthe individual action, more philosophical perhaps than theological, of\nthe prophets. It was, in fact, the individual activity of the prophets\nthat individualized the divinity. And above all by making the divinity\nethical.\n\nSubsequently reason--that is, philosophy--took possession of this God\nwho had arisen in the human consciousness as a consequence of the sense\nof divinity in man, and tended to define him and convert him into an\nidea. For to define a thing is to idealize it, a process which\nnecessitates the abstraction from it of its incommensurable or\nirrational element, its vital essence. Thus the God of feeling, the\ndivinity felt as a unique person and consciousness external to us,\nalthough at the same time enveloping and sustaining us, was converted\ninto the idea of God.\n\nThe logical, rational God, the _ens summum_, the _primum movens_, the\nSupreme Being of theological philosophy, the God who is reached by the\nthree famous ways of negation, eminence and causality, _vi\u00e6 negationis,\neminenti\u00e6, causalitatis_, is nothing but an idea of God, a dead thing.\nThe traditional and much debated proofs of his existence are, at bottom,\nmerely a vain attempt to determine his essence; for as Vinet has very\nwell observed, existence is deduced from essence; and to say that God\nexists, without saying what God is and how he is, is equivalent to\nsaying nothing at all.\n\nAnd this God, arrived at by the methods of eminence and negation or\nabstraction of finite qualities, ends by becoming an unthinkable God, a\npure idea, a God of whom, by the very fact of his ideal excellence, we\ncan say that he is nothing, as indeed he has been defined by Scotus\nErigena: _Deus propter excellentiam non inmerito nihil vocatur_. Or in\nthe words of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in his fifth Epistle,\n\"The divine darkness is the inaccessible light in which God is said to\ndwell.\" The anthropomorphic God, the God who is felt, in being purified\nof human, and as such finite, relative and temporal, attributes,\nevaporates into the God of deism or of pantheism.\n\nThe traditional so-called proofs of the existence of God all refer to\nthis God-Idea, to this logical God, the God by abstraction, and hence\nthey really prove nothing, or rather, they prove nothing more than the\nexistence of this idea of God.\n\nIn my early youth, when first I began to be puzzled by these eternal\nproblems, I read in a book, the author of which I have no wish to\nrecall,[39] this sentence: \"God is the great X placed over the ultimate\nbarrier of human knowledge; in the measure in which science advances,\nthe barrier recedes.\" And I wrote in the margin, \"On this side of the\nbarrier, everything is explained without Him; on the further side,\nnothing is explained, either with Him or without Him; God therefore is\nsuperfluous.\" And so far as concerns the God-Idea, the God of the\nproofs, I continue to be of the same opinion. Laplace is said to have\nstated that he had not found the hypothesis of God necessary in order to\nconstruct his scheme of the origin of the Universe, and it is very true.\nIn no way whatever does the idea of God help us to understand better the\nexistence, the essence and the finality of the Universe.\n\nThat there is a Supreme Being, infinite, absolute and eternal, whose\nexistence is unknown to us, and who has created the Universe, is not\nmore conceivable than that the material basis of the Universe itself,\nits matter, is eternal and infinite and absolute. We do not understand\nthe existence of the world one whit the better by telling ourselves that\nGod created it. It is a begging of the question, or a merely verbal\nsolution, intended to cover up our ignorance. In strict truth, we deduce\nthe existence of the Creator from the fact that the thing created\nexists, a process which does not justify rationally His existence. You\ncannot deduce a necessity from a fact, or else everything were\nnecessary.\n\nAnd if from the nature of the Universe we pass to what is called its\norder, which is supposed to necessitate an Ordainer, we may say that\norder is what there is, and we do not conceive of any other. This\ndeduction of God's existence from the order of the Universe implies a\ntransition from the ideal to the real order, an outward projection of\nour mind, a supposition that the rational explanation of a thing\nproduces the thing itself. Human art, instructed by Nature, possesses a\nconscious creative faculty, by means of which it apprehends the process\nof creation, and we proceed to transfer this conscious and artistic\ncreative faculty to the consciousness of an artist-creator, but from\nwhat nature he in his turn learnt his art we cannot tell.\n\nThe traditional analogy of the watch and the watchmaker is inapplicable\nto a Being absolute, infinite and eternal. It is, moreover, only another\nway of explaining nothing. For to say that the world is as it is and not\notherwise because God made it so, while at the same time we do not know\nfor what reason He made it so, is to say nothing. And if we knew for\nwhat reason God made it so, then God is superfluous and the reason\nitself suffices. If everything were mathematics, if there were no\nirrational element, we should not have had recourse to this explanatory\ntheory of a Supreme Ordainer, who is nothing but the reason of the\nirrational, and so merely another cloak for our ignorance. And let us\nnot discuss here that absurd proposition that, if all the type in a\nprinting-press were printed at random, the result could not possibly be\nthe composition of _Don Quixote_. Something would be composed which\nwould be as good as _Don Quixote_ for those who would have to be content\nwith it and would grow in it and would form part of it.\n\nIn effect, this traditional supposed proof of God's existence resolves\nitself fundamentally into hypostatizing or substantivating the\nexplanation or reason of a phenomenon; it amounts to saying that\nMechanics is the cause of movement, Biology of life, Philology of\nlanguage, Chemistry of bodies, by simply adding the capital letter to\nthe science and converting it into a force distinct from the phenomena\nfrom which we derive it and distinct from our mind which effects the\nderivation. But the God who is the result of this process, a God who is\nnothing but reason hypostatized and projected towards the infinite,\ncannot possibly be felt as something living and real, nor yet be\nconceived of save as a mere idea which will die with us.\n\nThe question arises, on the other hand, whether a thing the idea of\nwhich has been conceived but which has no real existence, does not exist\nbecause God wills that it should not exist, or whether God does not will\nit to exist because, in fact, it does not exist; and, with regard to the\nimpossible, whether a thing is impossible because God wills it so, or\nwhether God wills it so because, in itself and by the very fact of its\nown inherent absurdity, it is impossible. God has to submit to the\nlogical law of contradiction, and He cannot, according to the\ntheologians, cause two and two to make either more or less than four.\nEither the law of necessity is above Him or He Himself is the law of\nnecessity. And in the moral order the question arises whether falsehood,\nor homicide, or adultery, are wrong because He has so decreed it, or\nwhether He has so decreed it because they are wrong. If the former, then\nGod is a capricious and unreasonable God, who decrees one law when He\nmight equally well have decreed another, or, if the latter, He obeys an\nintrinsic nature and essence which exists in things themselves\nindependently of Him--that is to say, independently of His sovereign\nwill; and if this is the case, if He obeys the innate reason of things,\nthis reason, if we could but know it, would suffice us without any\nfurther need of God, and since we do not know it, God explains nothing.\nThis reason would be above God. Neither is it of any avail to say that\nthis reason is God Himself, the supreme reason of things. A reason of\nthis kind, a necessary reason, is not a personal something. It is will\nthat gives personality. And it is because of this problem of the\nrelations between God's reason, necessarily necessary, and His will,\nnecessarily free, that the logical and Aristotelian God will always be a\ncontradictory God.\n\nThe scholastic theologians never succeeded in disentangling themselves\nfrom the difficulties in which they found themselves involved when they\nattempted to reconcile human liberty with divine prescience and with the\nknowledge that God possesses of the free and contingent future; and that\nis strictly the reason why the rational God is wholly inapplicable to\nthe contingent, for the notion of contingency is fundamentally the same\nas the notion of irrationality. The rational God is necessarily\nnecessary in His being and in His working; in every single case He\ncannot do other than the best, and a number of different things cannot\nall equally be the best, for among infinite possibilities there is only\none that is best accommodated to its end, just as among the infinite\nnumber of lines that can be drawn from one point to another, there is\nonly one straight line. And the rational God, the God of reason, cannot\nbut follow in each case the straight line, the line that leads most\ndirectly to the end proposed, a necessary end, just as the only straight\nline that leads to it is a necessary line. And thus for the divinity of\nGod is substituted His necessity. And in the necessity of God, His free\nwill--that is to say, His conscious personality--perishes. The God of\nour heart's desire, the God who shall save our soul from nothingness,\nmust needs be an arbitrary God.\n\nNot because He thinks can God be God, but because He works, because He\ncreates; He is not a contemplative but an active God. A God-Reason, a\ntheoretical or contemplative God, such as is this God of theological\nrationalism, is a God that is diluted in His own contemplation. With\nthis God corresponds, as we shall see, the beatific vision, understood\nas the supreme expression of human felicity. A quietist God, in short,\nas reason, by its very essence, is quietist.\n\nThere remains the other famous proof of God's existence, that of the\nsupposed unanimous consent in a belief in Him among all peoples. But\nthis proof is not strictly rational, neither is it an argument in favour\nof the rational God who explains the Universe, but of the God of the\nheart, who makes us live. We should be justified in calling it a\nrational proof only on the supposition that we believed that reason was\nidentical with a more or less unanimous agreement among all peoples,\nthat it corresponded with the verdict of a universal suffrage, only on\nthe supposition that we held that _vox populi_, which is said to be _vox\nDei_, was actually the voice of reason.\n\nSuch was, indeed, the belief of Lamennais, that tragic and ardent\nspirit, who affirmed that life and truth were essentially one and the\nsame thing--would that they were!--and that reason was one, universal,\neverlasting and holy (_Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rence_, partie iv., chap,\nviii.). He invoked the _aut omnibus credendum est aut nemini_ of\nLactantius--we must believe all or none--and the saying of Heraclitus\nthat every individual opinion is fallible, and that of Aristotle that\nthe strongest proof consists in the general agreement of mankind, and\nabove all that of Pliny (_Paneg. Trajani_, lxii.), to the effect that\none man cannot deceive all men or be deceived by all--_nemo omnes,\nneminem omnes fefellerunt_. Would that it were so! And so he concludes\nwith the dictum of Cicero (_De natura deorum_, lib. iii., cap. ii., 5\nand 6), that we must believe the tradition of our ancestors even though\nthey fail to render us a reason--_maioribus autem nostris, etiam nulla\nratione reddita credere_.\n\nLet us suppose that this belief of the ancients in the divine\ninterpenetration of the whole of Nature is universal and constant, and\nthat it is, as Aristotle calls it, an ancestral dogma (_patrios doxa_)\n(_Metaphysica_, lib. vii., cap. vii.); this would prove only that there\nis a motive impelling peoples and individuals--that is to say, all or\nalmost all or a majority of them--to believe in a God. But may it not be\nthat there are illusions and fallacies rooted in human nature itself? Do\nnot all peoples begin by believing that the sun turns round the earth?\nAnd do we not all naturally incline to believe that which satisfies our\ndesires? Shall we say with Hermann[40] that, \"if there is a God, He has\nnot left us without some indication of Himself, and if is His will that\nwe should find Him.\"\n\nA pious desire, no doubt, but we cannot strictly call it a reason,\nunless we apply to it the Augustinian sentence, but which again is not\na reason, \"Since thou seekest Me, it must be that thou hast found Me,\"\nbelieving that God is the cause of our seeking Him.\n\nThis famous argument from the supposed unanimity of mankind's belief in\nGod, the argument which with a sure instinct was seized upon by the\nancients, is in its essence identical with the so-called moral proof\nwhich Kant employed in his _Critique of Practical Reason_, transposing\nits application from mankind collectively to the individual, the proof\nwhich he derives from our conscience, or rather from our feeling of\ndivinity. It is not a proof strictly or specifically rational, but\nvital; it cannot be applied to the logical God, the _ens summum_, the\nessentially simple and abstract Being, the immobile and impassible prime\nmover, the God-Reason, in a word, but to the biotic God, to the Being\nessentially complex and concrete, to the suffering God who suffers and\ndesires in us and with us, to the Father of Christ who is only to be\napproached through Man, through His Son (John xiv. 6), and whose\nrevelation is historical, or if you like, anecdotical, but not\nphilosophical or categorical.\n\nThe unanimous consent of mankind (let us suppose the unanimity) or, in\nother words, this universal longing of all human souls who have arrived\nat the consciousness of their humanity, which desires to be the end and\nmeaning of the Universe, this longing, which is nothing but that very\nessence of the soul which consists in its effort to persist eternally\nand without a break in the continuity of consciousness, leads us to the\nhuman, anthropomorphic God, the projection of our consciousness to the\nConsciousness of the Universe; it leads us to the God who confers human\nmeaning and finality upon the Universe and who is not the _ens summum_,\nthe _primum movens_, nor the Creator of the Universe, nor merely the\nIdea-God. It leads us to the living, subjective God, for He is simply\nsubjectivity objectified or personality universalized--He is more than a\nmere idea, and He is will rather than reason. God is Love--that is,\nWill. Reason, the Word, derives from Him, but He, the Father, is, above\nall, Will.\n\n\"There can be no doubt whatever,\" Ritschl says (_Rechtfertigung und\nVers\u00f6hnung_, iii., chap. v.), \"that a very imperfect view was taken of\nGod's spiritual personality in the older theology, when the functions of\nknowing and willing alone were employed to illustrate it. Religious\nthought plainly ascribes to God affections of feeling as well. The older\ntheology, however, laboured under the impression that feeling and\nemotion were characteristic only of limited and created personality; it\ntransformed, _e.g._, the religious idea of the Divine blessedness into\neternal self-knowledge, and that of the Divine wrath into a fixed\npurpose to punish sin.\" Yes, this logical God, arrived at by the _via\nnegationis_, was a God who, strictly speaking, neither loved nor hated,\nbecause He neither enjoyed nor suffered, an inhuman God, and His justice\nwas a rational or mathematical justice--that is, an injustice.\n\nThe attributes of the living God, of the Father of Christ, must be\ndeduced from His historical revelation in the Gospel and in the\nconscience of every Christian believer, and not from metaphysical\nreasonings which lead only to the Nothing-God of Scotus Erigena, to the\nrational or pantheistic God, to the atheist God--in short, to the\nde-personalized Divinity.\n\nNot by the way of reason, but only by the way of love and of suffering,\ndo we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates us\nfrom Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterwards we may love\nHim; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him,\nbefore knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God,\nand this knowledge has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God\nis indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within\nthe limits of our mind--that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we\nattempt to define Him, there rises up before us--Nothingness.\n\nThe idea of God, formulated by a theodicy that claims to be rational, is\nsimply an hypothesis, like the hypotheses of ether, for example.\n\nEther is, in effect, a merely hypothetical entity, valuable only in so\nfar as it explains that which by means of it we endeavour to\nexplain--light, electricity or universal gravitation--and only in so far\nas these facts cannot be explained in any other way. In like manner the\nidea of God is also an hypothesis, valuable only in so far as it enables\nus to explain that which by means of if we endeavour to explain--the\nessence and existence of the Universe--and only so long as these cannot\nbe explained in any other way. And since in reality we explain the\nUniverse neither better nor worse with this idea than without it, the\nidea of God, the supreme _petitio principii_, is valueless.\n\nBut if ether is nothing but an hypothesis explanatory of light, air, on\nthe other hand, is a thing that is directly felt; and even though it did\nnot enable us to explain the phenomenon of sound, we should nevertheless\nalways be directly aware of it, and, above all, of the lack of it in\nmoments of suffocation or air-hunger. And in the same way God Himself,\nnot the idea of God, may become a reality that is immediately felt; and\neven though the idea of Him does not enable us to explain either the\nexistence or the essence of the Universe, we have at times the direct\nfeeling of God, above all in moments of spiritual suffocation. And this\nfeeling--mark it well, for all that is tragic in it and the whole tragic\nsense of life is founded upon this--this feeling is a feeling of hunger\nfor God, of the lack of God. To believe in God is, in the first\ninstance, as we shall see, to wish that there may be a God, to be unable\nto live without Him.\n\nSo long as I pilgrimaged through the fields of reason in search of God,\nI could not find Him, for I was not deluded by the idea of God, neither\ncould I take an idea for God, and it was then, as I wandered among the\nwastes of rationalism, that I told myself that we ought to seek no other\nconsolation than the truth, meaning thereby reason, and yet for all that\nI was not comforted. But as I sank deeper and deeper into rational\nscepticism on the one hand and into heart's despair on the other, the\nhunger for God awoke within me, and the suffocation of spirit made me\nfeel the want of God, and with the want of Him, His reality. And I\nwished that there might be a God, that God might exist. And God does not\nexist, but rather super-exists, and He is sustaining our existence,\nexisting us _(existi\u00e9ndonos)_.\n\nGod, who is Love, the Father of Love, is the son of love in us. There\nare men of a facile and external habit of mind, slaves of reason, that\nreason which externalizes us, who think it a shrewd comment to say that\nso far from God having made man in His image and likeness, it is rather\nman who has made his gods or his God in his own image and likeness,[41]\nand so superficial are they that they do not pause to consider that if\nthe second of these propositions be true, as in fact it is, it is owing\nto the fact that the first is not less true. God and man, in effect,\nmutually create one another; God creates or reveals Himself in man and\nman creates himself in God. God is His own maker, _Deus ipse se facit_,\nsaid Lactantius (_Divinarum Institutionum_, ii., 8), and we may say that\nHe is making Himself continually both in man and by man. And if each of\nus, impelled by his love, by his hunger for divinity, creates for\nhimself an image of God according to his own desire, and if according to\nHis desire God creates Himself for each of us, then there is a\ncollective, social, human God, the resultant of all the human\nimaginations that imagine Him. For God is and reveals Himself in\ncollectivity. And God is the richest and most personal of human\nconceptions.\n\nThe Master of divinity has bidden us be perfect as our Father who is in\nheaven is perfect (Matt. v. 48), and in the sphere of thought and\nfeeling our perfection consists in the zeal with which we endeavour to\nequate our imagination with the total imagination of the humanity of\nwhich in God we form a part.\n\nThe logical theory of the opposition between the extension and the\ncomprehension of a concept, the one increasing in the ratio in which the\nother diminishes, is well known. The concept that is most extensive and\nat the same time least comprehensive is that of being or of thing, which\nembraces everything that exists and possesses no other distinguishing\nquality than that of being; while the concept that is most comprehensive\nand least extensive is that of the Universe, which is only applicable to\nitself and comprehends all existing qualities. And the logical or\nrational God, the God obtained by way of negation, the absolute entity,\nmerges, like reality itself, into nothingness; for, as Hegel pointed\nout, pure being and pure nothingness are identical. And the God of the\nheart, the God who is felt, the God of living men, is the Universe\nitself conceived as personality, is the consciousness of the Universe. A\nGod universal and personal, altogether different from the individual God\nof a rigid metaphysical monotheism.\n\nI must advert here once again to my view of the opposition that exists\nbetween individuality and personality, notwithstanding the fact that the\none demands the other. Individuality is, if I may so express it, the\ncontinent or thing which contains, personality the content or thing\ncontained, or I might say that my personality is in a certain sense my\ncomprehension, that which I comprehend or embrace within myself--which\nis in a certain way the whole Universe--and that my individuality is my\nextension; the one my infinite, the other my finite. A hundred jars of\nhard earthenware are strongly individualized, but it is possible for\nthem to be all equally empty or all equally full of the same homogeneous\nliquid, whereas two bladders of so delicate a membrane as to admit of\nthe action of osmosis and exosmosis may be strongly differentiated and\ncontain liquids of a very mixed composition. And thus a man, in so far\nas he is an individual, may be very sharply detached from others, a sort\nof spiritual crustacean, and yet be very poor in differentiating\ncontent. And further, it is true on the other hand that the more\npersonality a man has and the greater his interior richness and the more\nhe is a society within himself, the less brusquely he is divided from\nhis fellows. In the same way the rigid God of deism, of Aristotelian\nmonotheism, the _ens summum_, is a being in whom individuality, or\nrather simplicity, stifles personality. Definition kills him, for to\ndefine is to impose boundaries, it is to limit, and it is impossible to\ndefine the absolutely indefinable. This God lacks interior richness; he\nis not a society in himself. And this the vital revelation obviated by\nthe belief in the Trinity, which makes God a society and even a family\nin himself and no longer a pure individual. The God of faith is\npersonal; He is a person because He includes three persons, for\npersonality is not sensible of itself in isolation. An isolated person\nceases to be a person, for whom should he love? And if he does not love,\nhe is not a person. Nor can a simple being love himself without his love\nexpanding him into a compound being.\n\nIt was because God was felt as a Father that the belief in the Trinity\narose. For a God-Father cannot be a single, that is, a solitary, God. A\nfather is always the father of a family. And the fact that God was felt\nas a father acted as a continual incentive to conceive Him not merely\nanthropomorphically--that is to say, as a man, _anthropos_--but\nandromorphically, as a male, _an\u00ear_. In the popular Christian\nimagination, in effect, God the Father is conceived of as a male. And\nthe reason is that man, _homo_, _anthropos_, as we know him, is\nnecessarily either a male, _vir_, _an\u00ear_, or a female, _mulier_, _gyn\u00ea_. And\nto these may be added the child, who is neuter. And hence in order to\nsatisfy imaginatively this necessity of feeling God as a perfect\nman--that is, as a family--arose the cult of the God-Mother, the Virgin\nMary, and the cult of the Child Jesus.\n\nThe cult of the Virgin, Mariolatry, which, by the gradual elevation of\nthe divine element in the Virgin has led almost to her deification,\nanswers merely to the demand of the feeling that God should be a perfect\nman, that God should include in His nature the feminine element. The\nprogressive exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the work of Catholic piety,\nhaving its beginning in the expression Mother of God, _theotokos_,\n_deipara_, has culminated in attributing to her the status of\nco-redeemer and in the dogmatic declaration of her conception without\nthe stain of original sin. Hence she now occupies a position between\nHumanity and Divinity and nearer Divinity than Humanity. And it has been\nsurmised that in course of time she may perhaps even come to be regarded\nas yet another personal manifestation of the Godhead.\n\nAnd yet this might not necessarily involve the conversion of the Trinity\ninto a Quaternity. If _pneuma_, in Greek, spirit, instead of being neuter\nhad been feminine, who can say that the Virgin Mary might not already\nhave become an incarnation or humanization of the Holy Spirit? That\nfervent piety which always knows how to mould theological speculation in\naccordance with its own desires would have found sufficient warranty for\nsuch a doctrine in the text of the Gospel, in Luke's narrative of the\nAnnunciation where the angel Gabriel hails Mary with the words, \"The\nHoly Spirit shall come upon thee,\" _pneuma agion epeleusetai epi se_ (Luke\ni. 35). And thus a dogmatic evolution would have been effected parallel\nto that of the divinization of Jesus, the Son, and his identification\nwith the Word.\n\nIn any case the cult of the Virgin, of the eternal feminine, or rather\nof the divine feminine, of the divine maternity, helps to complete the\npersonalization of God by constituting Him a family.\n\nIn one of my books (_Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_, part ii., chap.\nlxvii.) I have said that \"God was and is, in our mind, masculine. In His\nmode of judging and condemning men, He acts as a male, not as a human\nperson above the limitation of sex; He acts as a father. And to\ncounterbalance this, the Mother element was required, the Mother who\nalways forgives, the Mother whose arms are always open to the child when\nhe flies from the frowning brow or uplifted hand of the angry father;\nthe Mother in whose bosom we seek the dim, comforting memory of that\nwarmth and peace of our pre-natal unconsciousness, of that milky\nsweetness that soothed our dreams of innocence; the Mother who knows no\njustice but that of forgiveness, no law but that of love. Our weak and\nimperfect conception of God as a God with a long beard and a voice of\nthunder, of a God who promulgates laws and pronounces dooms, of a God\nwho is the Master of a household, a Roman Paterfamilias, required\ncounterpoise and complement, and since fundamentally we are unable to\nconceive of the personal and living God as exalted above human and even\nmasculine characteristics, and still less as a neutral or hermaphrodite\nGod, we have recourse to providing Him with a feminine God, and by the\nside of the God-Father we have placed the Goddess-Mother, she who always\nforgives, because, since she sees with love-blind eyes, she sees always\nthe hidden cause of the fault and in that hidden cause the only justice\nof forgiveness ...\"\n\nAnd to this I must now add that not only are we unable to conceive of\nthe full and living God as masculine simply, but we are unable to\nconceive of Him as individual simply, as the projection of a solitary I,\nan unsocial I, an I that is in reality an abstract I. My living I is an\nI that is really a We; my living personal I lives only in other, of\nother, and by other I's; I am sprung, from a multitude of ancestors, I\ncarry them within me in extract, and at the same time I carry within me,\npotentially, a multitude of descendants, and God, the projection of my I\nto the infinite--or rather I, the projection of God to the finite--must\nalso be multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God--that\nis to say, in order to save the living God--faith's need--the need of\nthe feeling and the imagination--of conceiving Him and; feeling Him as\npossessed of a certain internal multiplicity.\n\nThis need the pagan feeling of a living divinity obviated by polytheism.\nIt is the agglomeration of its gods, the republic of them, that really\nconstitutes its Divinity. The real God of Hellenic paganism is not so\nmuch Father Zeus (_Jupiter_) as the whole society of gods and demi-gods.\nHence the solemnity of the invocation of Demosthenes when he invoked all\nthe gods and all the goddesses: _tois theohis euchomai pasi kahi pasais_.\nAnd when the rationalizers converted the term god, _theos_, which is\nproperly an adjective, a quality predicated of each one of the gods,\ninto a substantive, and added the definite article to it, they produced\n_the_ god, _o theos_, the dead and abstract god of philosophical\nrationalism, a substantivized quality and therefore void of personality.\nFor the masculine concrete god (_el_ dios) is nothing but the neuter\nabstract divine quality (_lo_ divino). Now the transition from feeling\nthe divinity in all things to substantivating it and converting the\nDivinity into God, cannot be achieved without feeling undergoing a\ncertain risk. And the Aristotelian God, the God of the logical proofs,\nis nothing more than the Divinity, a concept and not a living person who\ncan be felt and with whom through love man can communicate. This God is\nmerely a substantivized adjective; He is a constitutional God who\nreigns but does not govern, and Knowledge is His constitutional charter.\n\nAnd even in Greco-Latin paganism itself the tendency towards a living\nmonotheism is apparent in the fact that Zeus was conceived of and felt\nas a father, _Zeus pat\u00ear_, as Homer calls him, the _Ju-piter_ or\n_Ju-pater_ of the Latins, and as a father of a whole widely extended\nfamily of gods and goddesses who together with him constituted the\nDivinity.\n\nThe conjunction of pagan polytheism with Judaic monotheism, which had\nendeavoured by other means to save the personality of God, gave birth to\nthe feeling of the Catholic God, a God who is a society, as the pagan\nGod of whom I have spoken was a society, and who at the same time is\none, as the God of Israel finally became one. Such is the Christian\nTrinity, whose deepest sense rationalistic deism has scarcely ever\nsucceeded in understanding, that deism, which though more or less\nimpregnated with Christianity, always remains Unitarian or Socinian.\n\nAnd the truth is that we feel God less as a superhuman consciousness\nthan as the actual consciousness of the whole human race, past, present,\nand future, as the collective consciousness of the whole race, and still\nmore, as the total and infinite consciousness which embraces and\nsustains all consciousnesses, infra-human, human, and perhaps,\nsuper-human. The divinity that there is in everything, from the\nlowest--that is to say, from the least conscious--of living forms, to\nthe highest, including our own human consciousness, this divinity we\nfeel to be personalized, conscious of itself, in God. And this gradation\nof consciousnesses, this sense of the gulf between the human and the\nfully divine, the universal, consciousness, finds its counterpart in the\nbelief in angels with their different hierarchies, as intermediaries\nbetween our human consciousness and that of God. And these gradations a\nfaith consistent with itself must believe to be infinite, for only by an\ninfinite number of degrees is it possible to pass from the finite to the\ninfinite.\n\nDeistic rationalism conceives God as the Reason of the Universe, but its\nlogic compels it to conceive Him as an impersonal reason--that is to\nsay, as an idea--while deistic vitalism feels and imagines God as\nConsciousness, and therefore as a person or rather as a society of\npersons. The consciousness of each one of us, in effect, is a society of\npersons; in me there are various I's and even the I's of those among\nwhom I live, live in me.\n\nThe God of deistic rationalism, in effect, the God of the logical proofs\nof His existence, the _ens realissimum_ and the immobile prime mover, is\nnothing more than a Supreme Reason, but in the same sense in which we\ncan call the law of universal gravitation the reason of the falling of\nbodies, this law being merely the explanation of the phenomenon. But\nwill anyone say that that which we call the law of universal\ngravitation, or any other law or mathematical principle, is a true and\nindependent reality, that it is an angel, that it is something which\npossesses consciousness of itself and others, that it is a person? No,\nit is nothing but an idea without any reality outside of the mind of him\nwho conceives it. And similarly this God-Reason either possesses\nconsciousness of himself or he possesses no reality outside the mind\nthat conceives him. And if he possesses consciousness of himself, he\nbecomes a personal reason, and then all the value of the traditional\nproofs disappears, for these proofs only proved a reason, but not a\nsupreme consciousness. Mathematics prove an order, a constancy, a reason\nin the series of mechanical phenomena, but they 'do not prove that this\nreason is conscious of itself. This reason is a logical necessity, but\nthe logical necessity does not prove the teleological or finalist\nnecessity. And where there is no finality there is no personality, there\nis no consciousness.\n\nThe rational God, therefore--that is to say, the God who is simply the\nReason of the Universe and nothing more--consummates his own\ndestruction, is destroyed in our mind in so far as he is such a God, and\nis only born again in us when we feel him in our heart as a living\nperson, as Consciousness, and no longer merely as the impersonal and\nobjective Reason of the Universe. If we wish for a rational explanation\nof the construction of a machine, all that we require to know is the\nmechanical science of its constructor; but if we would have a reason for\nthe existence of such a machine, then, since it is the work not of\nNature but of man, we must suppose a conscious, constructive being. But\nthe second part of this reasoning is not applicable to God, even though\nit be said that in Him the mechanical science and the mechanician, by\nmeans of which the machine was constructed, are one and the same thing.\nFrom the rational point of view this identification is merely a begging\nof the question. And thus it is that reason destroys this Supreme\nReason, in so far as the latter is a person.\n\nThe human reason, in effect, is a reason that is based upon the\nirrational, upon the total vital consciousness, upon will and feeling;\nour human reason is not a reason that can prove to us the existence of a\nSupreme Reason, which in its turn would have to be based upon the\nSupreme Irrational, upon the Universal Consciousness. And the revelation\nof this Supreme Consciousness in our feeling and imagination, by love,\nby faith, by the process of personalization, is that which leads us to\nbelieve in the living God.\n\nAnd this God, the living God, your God, our God, is in me, is in you,\nlives in us, and we live and move and have our being in Him. And He is\nin us by virtue of the hunger, the longing, which we have for Him, He is\nHimself creating the longing for Himself. And He is the God of the\nhumble, for in the words of the Apostle, God chose the foolish things of\nthe world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to\nconfound the things which are mighty (i Cor. i. 27). And God is in each\none of us in the measure in which each one feels Him and loves Him. \"If\nof two men,\" says Kierkegaard, \"one prays to the true God without\nsincerity of heart, and the other prays to an idol with all the passion\nof an infinite yearning, it is the first who really prays to an idol,\nwhile the second really prays to God.\" It would be better to say that\nthe true God is He to whom man truly prays and whom man truly desires.\nAnd there may even be a truer revelation in superstition itself than in\ntheology. The venerable Father of the long beard and white locks who\nappears among the clouds carrying the globe of the world in his hand is\nmore living and more real than the _ens realissimum_ of theodicy.\n\nReason is an analytical, that is, a dissolving force, whenever it\ntransfers its activity from the form of intuitions, whether those of the\nindividual instinct of preservation or those of the social instinct of\nperpetuation, and applies it to the essence and matter of them. Reason\norders the sensible perceptions which give us the material world; but\nwhen its analysis is exercised upon the reality of the perceptions\nthemselves, it dissolves them and plunges us into a world of\nappearances, a world of shadows without consistency, for outside the\ndomain of the formal, reason is nihilist and annihilating. And it\nperforms the same terrible office when we withdraw it from its proper\ndomain and apply it to the scrutiny of the imaginative intuitions which\ngive us the spiritual world. For reason annihilates and imagination\ncompletes, integrates or totalizes; reason by itself alone kills, and it\nis imagination that gives life. If it is true that imagination by itself\nalone, in giving us life without limit, leads us to lose our identity in\nthe All and also kills us as individuals, it kills us by excess of life.\nReason, the head, speaks to us the word Nothing! imagination, the heart,\nthe word All! and between all and nothing, by the fusion of the all and\nthe nothing within us, we live in God, who is All, and God lives in us\nwho, without Him, are nothing. Reason reiterates, Vanity of vanities!\nall is vanity! And imagination answers, Plenitude of plenitudes! all is\nplenitude! And thus we live the vanity of plenitude or the plenitude of\nvanity.\n\nAnd so deeply rooted in the depths of man's being is this vital need of\nliving a world[42] illogical, irrational, personal or divine, that those\nwho do not believe in God, or believe that they do not believe in Him,\nbelieve nevertheless in some little pocket god or even devil of their\nown, or in an omen, or in a horseshoe picked up by chance on the\nroadside and carried about with them to bring them good luck and defend\nthem from that very reason whose loyal and devoted henchmen they imagine\nthemselves to be.\n\nThe God whom we hunger after is the God to whom we pray, the God of the\n_Pater Noster_, of the Lord's Prayer; the God whom we beseech, before\nall and above all, and whether we are aware of it or not, to instil\nfaith into us, to make us believe in Him, to make Himself in us, the God\nto whom we pray that His name may be hallowed and that His will may be\ndone--His will, not His reason--on earth as it is in heaven; but feeling\nthat His will cannot be other than the essence of our will, the desire\nto persist eternally.\n\nAnd such a God is the God of love--_how_ He is it profits us not to ask,\nbut rather let each consult his own heart and give his imagination leave\nto picture Him in the remoteness of the Universe, gazing down upon him\nwith those myriad eyes of His that shine in the night-darkened heavens.\nHe in whom you believe, reader, He is your God, He who has lived with\nyou and within you, who was born with you, who was a child when you were\na child, who became a man according as you became a man, who will vanish\nwhen you yourself vanish, and who is your principle of continuity in\nthe spiritual life, for He is the principle of solidarity among all men\nand in each man and between men and the Universe, and He is, as you are,\na person. And if you believe in God, God believes in you, and believing\nin you He creates you continually. For in your essence you are nothing\nbut the idea that God possesses of you--but a living idea, because the\nidea of a God who is living and conscious of Himself, of a\nGod-Consciousness, and apart from what you are in the society of God you\nare nothing.\n\nHow to define God? Yes, that is our longing. That was the longing of the\nman Jacob, when, after wrestling all the night until the breaking of the\nday with that divine visitant, he cried, \"Tell me, I pray thee, thy\nname!\" (Gen. xxxii. 29). Listen to the words of that great Christian\npreacher, Frederick William Robertson, in a sermon preached in Trinity\nChapel, Brighton, on the 10th of June, 1849: \"And this is our\nstruggle--_the_ struggle. Let any true man go down into the deeps of his\nown being, and answer us--what is the cry that comes from the most real\npart of his nature? Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob asked for that\nin his _first_ communing with God--preservation, safety. Is it even\nthis--to be forgiven our sins? Jacob had a sin to be forgiven, and in\nthat most solemn moment of his existence he did not say a syllable about\nit. Or is it this--'Hallowed be Thy name'? No, my brethren. Out of our\nfrail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in the earthlier\nhours of our religion may be this--'Save my soul'; but in the most\nunearthly moments it is this--'Tell me thy name.' We move through a\nworld of mystery; and the deepest question is, What is the being that is\never near, sometimes felt, never seen; that which has haunted us from\nchildhood with a dream of something surpassingly fair, which has never\nyet been realized; that which sweeps through the soul at times as a\ndesolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death,\nleaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness; that which has\ntouched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with\nagony, and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain; that\nwhich comes to us in aspirations of nobleness and conceptions of\nsuperhuman excellence? Shall we say It or He? What is It? Who is He?\nThose anticipations of Immortality and God--what are they? Are they the\nmere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a living\nsomething beside me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, echoing\nthrough the vast void of Nothingness? or shall I call them God, Father,\nSpirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside me? Tell me Thy name,\nthou awful mystery of Loveliness! This is the struggle of all earnest\nlife.\"[43]\n\nThus Robertson. To which I must add this comment, that Tell me thy name\nis essentially the same as Save my soul! We ask Him His name in order\nthat He may save our soul, that He may save the human soul, that He may\nsave the human finality of the Universe. And if they tell us that He is\ncalled He, that He is the _ens realissimum_ or the Supreme Being or any\nother metaphysical name, we are not contented, for we know that every\nmetaphysical name is an X, and we go on asking Him His name. And there\nis only one name that satisfies our longing, and that is the name\nSaviour, Jesus. God is the love that saves. As Browning said in his\n_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_,\n\n    For the loving worm within its clod,\n    Were diviner than a loveless God\n    Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.\n\nThe essence of the divine is Love, Will that personalizes and\neternalizes, that feels the hunger for eternity and infinity.\n\nIt is ourselves, it is our eternity that we seek in God, it is our\ndivinization. It was Browning again who said, in _Saul_,\n\n    'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek\n    In the Godhead!\n\nBut this God who saves us, this personal God, the Consciousness of the\nUniverse who envelops and sustains our consciousnesses, this God who\ngives human finality to the whole creation--does He exist? Have we\nproofs of His existence?\n\nThis question leads in the first place to an enquiry into the cleaning\nof this notion of existence. What is it to exist and in what sense do we\nspeak of things as not existing?\n\nIn its etymological signification to exist is to be outside of\nourselves, outside of our mind: _ex-sistere_. But is there anything\noutside of our mind, outside of our consciousness which embraces the sum\nof the known? Undoubtedly there is. The matter of knowledge comes to us\nfrom without. And what is the mode of this matter? It is impossible for\nus to know, for to know is to clothe matter with form, and hence we\ncannot know the formless as formless. To do so would be tantamount to\ninvesting chaos with order.\n\nThis problem of the existence of God, a problem that is rationally\ninsoluble, is really identical with the problem of consciousness, of the\n_ex-sistentia_ and not of the _in-sistentia_ of consciousness, it is\nnone other than the problem of the substantial existence of the soul,\nthe problem of the perpetuity of the human soul, the problem of the\nhuman finality of the Universe itself. To believe in a living and\npersonal God, in an eternal and universal consciousness that knows and\nloves us, is to believe that the Universe exists _for_ man. For man, or\nfor a consciousness of the same order as the human consciousness, of the\nsame nature, although sublimated, a consciousness that is capable of\nknowing us, in the depth of whose being our memory may live for ever.\nPerhaps, as I have said before, by a supreme and desperate effort of\nresignation we might succeed in making the sacrifice of our personality\nprovided that we knew that at our death it would go to enrich a Supreme\nPersonality; provided that we knew that the Universal Soul was nourished\nby our souls and had need of them. We might perhaps meet death with a\ndesperate resignation or with a resigned despair, delivering up our soul\nto the soul of humanity, bequeathing to it our work, the work that bears\nthe impress of our person, if it were certain that this humanity were\ndestined to bequeath its soul in its turn to another soul, when at long\nlast consciousness shall have become extinct upon this desire-tormented\nEarth. But is it certain?\n\nAnd if the soul of humanity is eternal, if the human collective\nconsciousness is eternal, if there is a Consciousness of the Universe,\nand if this Consciousness is eternal, why must our own individual\nconsciousness--yours, reader, mine--be not eternal?\n\nIn the vast all of the Universe, must there be this unique anomaly--a\nconsciousness that knows itself, loves itself and feels itself, joined\nto an organism which can only live within such and such degrees of heat,\na merely transitory phenomenon? No, it is not mere curiosity that\ninspires the wish to know whether or not the stars are inhabited by\nliving organisms, by consciousnesses akin to our own, and a profound\nlonging enters into that dream that our souls shall pass from star to\nstar through the vast spaces of the heavens, in an infinite series of\ntransmigrations. The feeling of the divine makes us wish and believe\nthat everything is animated, that consciousness, in a greater or less\ndegree, extends through everything. We wish not only to save ourselves,\nbut to save the world from nothingness. And therefore God. Such is His\nfinality as we feel it.\n\nWhat would a universe be without any consciousness capable of reflecting\nit and knowing it? What would objectified reason be without will and\nfeeling? For us it would be equivalent to nothing--a thousand times more\ndreadful than nothing.\n\nIf such a supposition is reality, our life is deprived of sense and\nvalue.\n\nIt is not, therefore, rational necessity, but vital anguish that impels\nus to believe in God. And to believe in God--I must reiterate it yet\nagain--is, before all and above all, to feel a hunger for God, a hunger\nfor divinity, to be sensible of His lack and absence, to wish that God\nmay exist. And it is to wish to save the human finality of the Universe.\nFor one might even come to resign oneself to being absorbed by God, if\nit be that our consciousness is based upon a Consciousness, if\nconsciousness is the end of the Universe.\n\n\"The wicked man hath said in his heart, There is no God.\" And this is\ntruth. For in his head the righteous man may say to himself, God does\nnot exist! But only the wicked can say it in his heart. Not to believe\nthat there is a God or to believe that there is not a God, is one thing;\nto resign oneself to there not being a God is another thing, and it is a\nterrible and inhuman thing; but not to wish that there be a God exceeds\nevery other moral monstrosity; although, as a matter of fact, those who\ndeny God deny Him because of their despair at not finding Him.\n\nAnd now reason once again confronts us with the Sphinx-like\nquestion--the Sphinx, in effect, is reason--Does God exist? This eternal\nand eternalizing person who gives meaning--and I will add, a human\nmeaning, for there is none other--to the Universe, is it a substantial\nsomething, existing independently of our consciousness, independently of\nour desire? Here we arrive at the insoluble, and it is best that it\nshould be so. Let it suffice for reason that it cannot prove the\nimpossibility of His existence.\n\nTo believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to\nact as if He existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the\ninner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets\nhope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this\ndivine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.\n\nLet us see how this may be.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[38] Lecture I., p. 36. London, 1895, Black.\n\n[39] _No quiero acordarme_, a phrase that is always associated in\nSpanish literature with the opening sentence of _Don Quijote: En an\nlugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme_.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[40] W. Hermann, _Christlich systematische Dogmatik_, in the volume\nentitled _Systematische christliche Religion. Die Kultur der Gegenwart_\nseries, published by P. Hinneberg.\n\n[41] _Dieu a fait l'homme \u00e0 son image, mais l'homme le lui a bien\nrendu_, Voltaire.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[42] _Vivir un mundo_.\n\n[43] _Sermons_, by the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson. First series, sermon\niii., \"Jacob's Wrestling.\" Kegan Paul, Trench, Tr\u00fcbuer and Co., London,\n1898.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nFAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY\n\nSanctius ac reverentius visum de actis deorum credere quam\nscire.--TACITUS: _Germania_, 34.\n\n\nThe road that leads us to the living God, the God of the heart, and that\nleads us back to Him when we have left Him for the lifeless God of\nlogic, is the road of faith, not of rational or mathematical conviction.\n\nAnd what is faith?\n\nThis is the question propounded in the Catechism of Christian Doctrine\nthat was taught us at school, and the answer runs: Faith is believing\nwhat we have not seen.\n\nThis, in an essay written some twelve years ago, I amended as follows:\n\"Believing what we have not seen, no! but creating what we do not see.\"\nAnd I have already told you that believing in God is, in the first\ninstance at least, wishing that God may be, longing for the existence of\nGod.\n\nThe theological virtue of faith, according to the Apostle Paul, whose\ndefinition serves as the basis of the traditional Christian\ndisquisitions upon it, is \"the substance of things hoped for, the\nevidence of things not seen,\" _elpizomev\u00f4n hupostasis, pragmat\u00f4n\nelegchos ou blepomen\u00f4n_ (Heb. xi. 1).\n\nThe substance, or rather the support and basis, of hope, the guarantee\nof it. That which connects, or, rather than connects, subordinates,\nfaith to hope. And in fact we do not hope because we believe, but rather\nwe believe because we hope. It is hope in God, it is the ardent longing\nthat there may be a God who guarantees the eternity of consciousness,\nthat leads us to believe in Him.\n\nBut faith, which after all is something compound, comprising a\ncognitive, logical, or rational element together with an affective,\nbiotic, sentimental, and strictly irrational element, is presented to us\nunder the form of knowledge. And hence the insuperable difficulty of\nseparating it from some dogma or other. Pure faith, free from dogmas,\nabout which I wrote a great deal years ago, is a phantasm. Neither is\nthe difficulty overcome by inventing the theory of faith in faith\nitself. Faith needs a matter to work upon.\n\nBelieving is a form of knowing, even if it be no more than a knowing and\neven a formulating of our vital longing. In ordinary language the term\n\"believing,\" however, is used in a double and even a contradictory\nsense. It may express, on the one hand, the highest degree of the mind's\nconviction of the truth of a thing, and, on the other hand, it may imply\nmerely a weak and hesitating persuasion of its truth. For if in one\nsense believing expresses the firmest kind of assent we are capable of\ngiving, the expression \"I believe that it is so, although I am not sure\nof it,\" is nevertheless common in ordinary speech.\n\nAnd this agrees with what we have said above with respect to uncertainty\nas the basis of faith. The most robust faith, in so far as it is\ndistinguished from all other knowledge that is not _pistic_ or of\nfaith--faithful, as we might say--is based on uncertainty. And this is\nbecause faith, the guarantee of things hoped for, is not so much\nrational adhesion to a theoretical principle as trust in a person who\nassures us of something. Faith supposes an objective, personal element.\nWe do not so much believe something as believe someone who promises us\nor assures us of this or the other thing. We believe in a person and in\nGod in so far as He is a person and a personalization of the Universe.\n\nThis personal or religious element in faith is evident. Faith, it is\nsaid, is in itself neither theoretical knowledge nor rational adhesion\nto a truth, nor yet is its essence sufficiently explained by defining it\nas trust in God. Seeberg says of faith that it is \"the inward submission\nto the spiritual authority of God, immediate obedience. And in so far as\nthis obedience is the means of attaining a rational principle, faith is\na personal conviction.\"[44]\n\nThe faith which St. Paul defined, _pistis_ in Greek, is better\ntranslated as trust, confidence. The word _pistis_ is derived from the\nverb _peith\u00f4_, which in its active voice means to persuade and in its\nmiddle voice to trust in someone, to esteem him as worthy of trust, to\nplace confidence in him, to obey. And _fidare se_, to trust, is derived\nfrom the root _fid_--whence _fides_, faith, and also confidence. The\nGreek root _pith_ and the Latin _fid_ are twin brothers. In the root of\nthe word \"faith\" itself, therefore, there is implicit the idea of\nconfidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidence\nis placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we conceive as\nsomething personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is something\nimpersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in the\nperson who gives us hope, that we believe, not directly and immediately\nin truth itself or in hope itself.\n\nAnd this personal or rather personifying element in faith extends even\nto the lowest forms of it, for it is this that produces faith in\npseudo-revelation, in inspiration, in miracle. There is a story of a\nParisian doctor, who, when he found that a quack-healer was drawing away\nhis client\u00e8le, removed to a quarter of the city as distant as possible\nfrom his former abode, where he was totally unknown, and here he gave\nhimself out as a quack-healer and conducted himself as such. When he was\ndenounced as an illegal practitioner he produced his doctor's\ncertificate, and explained his action more or less as follows: \"I am\nindeed a doctor, but if I had announced myself as such I should not\nhave had as large a client\u00e8le as I have as a quack-healer. Now that all\nmy clients know that I have studied medicine, however, and that I am a\nproperly qualified medical man, they will desert me in favour of some\nquack who can assure them that he has never studied, but cures simply by\ninspiration.\" And true it is that a doctor is discredited when it is\nproved that he has never studied medicine and possesses no qualifying\ncertificate, and that a quack is discredited when it is proved that he\nhas studied and is a qualified practitioner. For some believe in science\nand in study, while others believe in the person, in inspiration, and\neven in ignorance.\n\n\"There is one distinction in the world's geography which comes\nimmediately to our minds when we thus state the different thoughts and\ndesires of men concerning their religion. We remember how the whole\nworld is in general divided into two hemispheres upon this matter. One\nhalf of the world--the great dim East--is mystic. It insists upon not\nseeing anything too clearly. Make any one of the great ideas of life\ndistinct and clear, and immediately it seems to the Oriental to be\nuntrue. He has an instinct which tells him that the vastest thoughts are\ntoo vast for the human mind, and that if they are made to present\nthemselves in forms of statement which the human mind can comprehend,\ntheir nature is violated and their strength is lost.\n\n\"On the other hand, the Occidental, the man of the West, demands\nclearness and is impatient with mystery. He loves a definite statement\nas much as his brother of the East dislikes it. He insists on knowing\nwhat the eternal and infinite forces mean to his personal life, how they\nwill make him personally happier and better, almost how they will build\nthe house over his head, and cook the dinner on his hearth. This is the\ndifference between the East and the West, between man on the banks of\nthe Ganges and man on the banks of the Mississippi. Plenty of\nexceptions, of course, there are--mystics in Boston and St. Louis,\nhard-headed men of facts in Bombay and Calcutta. The two great\ndispositions cannot be shut off from one another by an ocean or a range\nof mountains. In some nations and places--as, for instance, among the\nJews and in our own New England--they notably commingle. But in general\nthey thus divide the world between them. The East lives in the moonlight\nof mystery, the West in the sunlight of scientific fact. The East cries\nout to the Eternal for vague impulses. The West seizes the present with\nlight hands, and will not let it go till it has furnished it with\nreasonable, intelligible motives. Each misunderstands, distrusts, and in\nlarge degree despises the other. But the two hemispheres together, and\nnot either one by itself, make up the total world.\" Thus, in one of his\nsermons, spoke the great Unitarian preacher Phillips Brooks, late Bishop\nof Massachusetts (_The Mystery of Iniquity and Other Sermons_, sermon\nxvi.).\n\nWe might rather say that throughout the whole world, in the East as well\nas in the West, rationalists seek definition and believe in the concept,\nwhile vitalists seek inspiration and believe in the person. The former\nscrutinize the Universe in order that they may wrest its secrets from\nit; the latter pray to the Consciousness of the Universe, strive to\nplace themselves in immediate relationship with the Soul of the World,\nwith God, in order that they may find the guarantee or substance of what\nthey hope for, which is not to die, and the evidence of what they do not\nsee.\n\nAnd since a person is a will, and will always has reference to the\nfuture, he who believes, believes in what is to come--that is, in what\nhe hopes for. We do not believe, strictly speaking, in what is or in\nwhat was, except as the guarantee, as the substance, of what will be.\nFor the Christian, to believe in the resurrection of Christ--that is to\nsay, in tradition and in the Gospel, which assure him that Christ has\nrisen, both of them personal forces--is to believe that he himself will\none day rise again by the grace of Christ. And even scientific\nfaith--for such there is--refers to the future and is an act of trust.\nThe man of science believes that at a certain future date an eclipse of\nthe sun will take place; he believes that the laws which have governed\nthe world hitherto will continue to govern it.\n\nTo believe, I repeat, is to place confidence in someone, and it has\nreference to a person. I say that I know that there is an animal called\nthe horse, and that it has such and such characteristics, because I have\nseen it; and I say that I believe in the existence of the giraffe or the\nornithorhyncus, and that it possesses such and such qualities, because I\nbelieve those who assure me that they have seen it. And hence the\nelement of uncertainty attached to faith, for it is possible that a\nperson may be deceived or that he may deceive us.\n\nBut, on the other hand, this personal element in belief gives it an\neffective and loving character, and above all, in religious faith, a\nreference to what is hoped for. Perhaps there is nobody who would\nsacrifice his life for the sake of maintaining that the three angles of\na triangle are together equal to two right angles, for such a truth does\nnot demand the sacrifice of our life; but, on the other hand, there are\nmany who have lost their lives for the sake of maintaining their\nreligious faith. Indeed it is truer to say that martyrs make faith than\nthat faith makes martyrs. For faith is not the mere adherence of the\nintellect to an abstract principle; it is not the recognition of a\ntheoretical truth, a process in which the will merely sets in motion our\nfaculty of comprehension; faith is an act of the will--it is a movement\nof the soul towards a practical truth, towards a person, towards\nsomething that makes us not merely comprehend life, but that makes us\nlive.[45]\n\nFaith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent\nupon reason, has its well-spring and source of power elsewhere, in\nsomething supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man\nof singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind, has said\nthat it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that\ngives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of the\nreason lead to nothing but affliction of spirit (_Trait\u00e9 de\nl'encha\u00eenement des id\u00e9es fondamentales dans les sciences et dans\nl'histoire_, \u00a7 329). And in truth we wish to live.\n\nBut, although we have said that faith is a thing of the will, it would\nperhaps be better to say that it is will itself--the will not to die,\nor, rather, that it is some other psychic force distinct from\nintelligence, will, and feeling. We should thus have feeling, knowing,\nwilling, and believing or creating. For neither feeling, nor\nintelligence, nor will creates; they operate upon a material already\ngiven, upon the material given them by faith. Faith is the creative\npower in man. But since it has a more intimate relation with the will\nthan with any other of his faculties, we conceive it under the form of\nvolition. It should be borne in mind, however, that wishing to\nbelieve--that is to say, wishing to create--is not precisely the same as\nbelieving or creating, although it is its starting-point.\n\nFaith, therefore, if not a creative force, is the fruit of the will, and\nits function is to create. Faith, in a certain sense, creates its\nobject. And faith in God consists in creating God; and since it is God\nwho gives us faith in Himself, it is God who is continually creating\nHimself in us. Therefore St. Augustine said: \"I will seek Thee, Lord, by\ncalling upon Thee, and I will call upon Thee by believing in Thee. My\nfaith calls upon Thee, Lord, the faith which Thou hast given me, with\nwhich Thou hast inspired me through the Humanity of Thy Son, through the\nministry of Thy preacher\" (_Confessions_, book i., chap. i.). The power\nof creating God in our own image and likeness, of personalizing the\nUniverse, simply means that we carry God within us, as the substance of\nwhat we hope for, and that God is continually creating us in His own\nimage and likeness.\n\nAnd we create God--that is to say, God creates Himself in us--by\ncompassion, by love. To believe in God is to love Him, and in our love\nto fear Him; and we begin by loving Him even before knowing Him, and by\nloving Him we come at last to see and discover Him in all things.\n\nThose who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear\nHim, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught them\nthat God exists, and these in their turn often enough do not believe in\nHim either. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any\npassion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty,\nwithout doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation,\nbelieve only in the God-Idea, not in God Himself. And just as belief in\nGod is born of love, so also it may be born of fear, and even of hate,\nand of such kind was the belief of Vanni Fucci, the thief, whom Dante\ndepicts insulting God with obscene gestures in Hell (_Inf._, xxv., 1-3).\nFor the devils also believe in God, and not a few atheists.\n\nIs it not perhaps a mode of believing in God, this fury with which those\ndeny and even insult Him, who, because they cannot bring themselves to\nbelieve in Him, wish that He may not exist? Like those who believe,\nthey, too, wish that God may exist; but being men of a weak and passive\nor of an evil disposition, in whom reason is stronger than will, they\nfeel themselves caught in the grip of reason and haled along in their\nown despite, and they fall into despair, and because of their despair\nthey deny, and in their denial they affirm and create the thing that\nthey deny, and God reveals Himself in them, affirming Himself by their\nvery denial of Him.\n\nBut it will be objected to all this that to demonstrate that faith\ncreates its own object is to demonstrate that this object is an object\nfor faith alone, that outside faith it has no objective reality; just\nas, on the other hand, to maintain that faith is necessary because it\naffords consolation to the masses of the people, or imposes a wholesome\nrestraint upon them, is to declare that the object of faith is illusory.\nWhat is certain is that for thinking believers to-day, faith is, before\nall and above all, wishing that God may exist.\n\nWishing that God may exist, and acting and feeling as if He did exist.\nAnd desiring God's existence and acting conformably with this desire, is\nthe means whereby we create God--that is, whereby God creates Himself in\nus, manifests Himself to us, opens and reveals Himself to us. For God\ngoes out to meet him who seeks Him with love and by love, and hides\nHimself from him who searches for Him with the cold and loveless reason.\nGod wills that the heart should have rest, but not the head, reversing\nthe order of the physical life in which the head sleeps and rests at\ntimes while the heart wakes and works unceasingly. And thus knowledge\nwithout love leads us away from God; and love, even without knowledge,\nand perhaps better without it, leads us to God, and through God to\nwisdom. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!\n\nAnd if you should ask me how I believe in God--that is to say, how God\ncreates Himself in me and reveals Himself to me--my answer may, perhaps,\nprovoke your smiles or your laughter, or it may even scandalize you.\n\nI believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath\nof His affection, feel His invisible and intangible hand, drawing me,\nleading me, grasping me; because I possess an inner consciousness of a\nparticular providence and of a universal mind that marks out for me the\ncourse of my own destiny. And the concept of law--it is nothing but a\nconcept after all!--tells me nothing and teaches me nothing.\n\nOnce and again in my life I have seen myself suspended in a trance over\nthe abyss; once and again I have found myself at the cross-roads,\nconfronted by a choice of ways and aware that in choosing one I should\nbe renouncing all the others--for there is no turning back upon these\nroads of life; and once and again in such unique moments as these I have\nfelt the impulse of a mighty power, conscious, sovereign, and loving.\nAnd then, before the feet of the wayfarer, opens out the way of the\nLord.\n\nIt is possible for a man to feel the Universe calling to him and guiding\nhim as one person guides and calls to another, to hear within him its\nvoice speaking without words and saying: \"Go and preach to all peoples!\"\nHow do you know that the man you see before you possesses a\nconsciousness like you, and that an animal also possesses such a\nconsciousness, more or less dimly, but not a stone? Because the man acts\ntowards you like a man, like a being made in your likeness, and because\nthe stone does not act towards you at all, but suffers you to act upon\nit. And in the same way I believe that the Universe possesses a certain\nconsciousness like myself, because its action towards me is a human\naction, and I feel that it is a personality that environs me.\n\nHere is a formless mass; it appears to be a kind of animal; it is\nimpossible to distinguish its members; I only see two eyes, eyes which\ngaze at me with a human gaze, the gaze of a fellow-being, a gaze which\nasks for pity; and I hear it breathing. I conclude that in this formless\nmass there is a consciousness. In just such a way and none other, the\nstarry-eyed heavens gaze down upon the believer, with a superhuman, a\ndivine, gaze, a gaze that asks for supreme pity and supreme love, and in\nthe serenity of the night he hears the breathing of God, and God touches\nhim in his heart of hearts and reveals Himself to him. It is the\nUniverse, living, suffering, loving, and asking for love.\n\nFrom loving little trifling material things, which lightly come and\nlightly go, having no deep root in our affections, we come to love the\nmore lasting things, the things which our hands cannot grasp; from\nloving goods we come to love the Good; from loving beautiful things we\ncome to love Beauty; from loving the true we come to love the Truth;\nfrom loving pleasures we come to love Happiness; and, last of all, we\ncome to love Love. We emerge from ourselves in order to penetrate\nfurther into our supreme I; individual consciousness emerges from us in\norder to submerge itself in the total Consciousness of which we form a\npart, but without being dissolved in it. And God is simply the Love that\nsprings from universal suffering and becomes consciousness.\n\nBut this, it will be said, is merely to revolve in an iron ring, for\nsuch a God is not objective. And at this point it may not be out of\nplace to give reason its due and to examine exactly what is meant by a\nthing existing, being objective.\n\nWhat is it, in effect, to exist? and when do we say that a thing exists?\nA thing exists when it is placed outside us, and in such a way that it\nshall have preceded our perception of it and be capable of continuing to\nsubsist outside us after we have disappeared. But have I any certainty\nthat anything has preceded me or that anything must survive me? Can my\nconsciousness know that there is anything outside it? Everything that I\nknow or can know is within my consciousness. We will not entangle\nourselves, therefore, in the insoluble problem of an objectivity outside\nour perceptions. Things exist in so far as they act. To exist is to act.\n\nBut now it will be said that it is not God, but the idea of God, that\nacts in us. To which we shall reply that it is sometimes God acting by\nHis idea, but still very often it is rather God acting in us by Himself.\nAnd the retort will be a demand for proofs of the objective truth of the\nexistence of God, since we ask for signs. And we shall have to answer\nwith Pilate: What is truth?\n\nAnd having asked this question, Pilate turned away without waiting for\nan answer and proceeded to wash his hands in order that he might\nexculpate himself for having allowed Christ to be condemned to death.\nAnd there are many who ask this question, What is truth? but without any\nintention of waiting for the answer, and solely in order that they may\nturn away and wash their hands of the crime of having helped to kill and\neject God from their own consciousness or from the consciousness of\nothers.\n\nWhat is truth? There are two kinds of truth--the logical or objective,\nthe opposite of which is error, and the moral or subjective, the\nopposite of which is falsehood. And in a previous essay I have\nendeavoured to show that error is the fruit of falsehood.[46]\n\nMoral truth, the road that leads to intellectual truth, which also is\nmoral, inculcates the study of science, which is over and above all a\nschool of sincerity and humility. Science teaches us, in effect, to\nsubmit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as they\nare--that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would\nhave them be. In a religiously scientific investigation, it is the data\nof reality themselves, it is the perceptions which we receive from the\noutside world, that formulate themselves in our mind as laws--it is not\nwe ourselves who thus formulate them. It is the numbers themselves which\nin our mind create mathematics. Science is the most intimate school of\nresignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly\nmost insignificant of facts. And it is the gateway of religion; but\nwithin the temple itself its function ceases.\n\nAnd just as there is logical truth, opposed to error, and moral truth,\nopposed to falsehood, so there is also esthetic truth or verisimilitude,\nwhich is opposed to extravagance, and religious truth or hope, which is\nopposed to the inquietude of absolute despair. For esthetic\nverisimilitude, the expression of which is sensible, differs from\nlogical truth, the demonstration of which is rational; and religious\ntruth, the truth of faith, the substance of things hoped for, is not\nequivalent to moral truth, but superimposes itself upon it. He who\naffirms a faith built upon a basis of uncertainty does not and cannot\nlie.\n\nAnd not only do we not believe with reason, nor yet above reason nor\nbelow reason, but we believe against reason. Religious faith, it must be\nrepeated yet again, is not only irrational, it is contra-rational.\nKierkegaard says: \"Poetry is illusion before knowledge; religion\nillusion after knowledge. Between poetry and religion the worldly wisdom\nof living plays its comedy. Every individual who does not live either\npoetically or religiously is a fool\" (_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig\nEfterskrift_, chap. iv., sect. 2a, \u00a7 2). The same writer tells us that\nChristianity is a desperate sortie (_salida_). Even so, but it is only\nby the very desperateness of this sortie that we can win through to\nhope, to that hope whose vitalizing illusion is of more force than all\nrational knowledge, and which assures us that there is always something\nthat cannot be reduced to reason. And of reason the same may be said as\nwas said of Christ: that he who is not with it is against it. That which\nis not rational is contra-rational; and such is hope.\n\nBy this circuitous route we always arrive at hope in the end.\n\nTo the mystery of love, which is the mystery of suffering, belongs a\nmysterious form, and this form is time. We join yesterday to to-morrow\nwith links of longing, and the now is, strictly, nothing but the\nendeavour of the before to make itself the after; the present is simply\nthe determination of the past to become the future. The now is a point\nwhich, if not sharply articulated, vanishes; and, nevertheless, in this\npoint is all eternity, the substance of time.\n\nEverything that has been can be only as it was, and everything that is\ncan be only as it is; the possible is always relegated to the future,\nthe sole domain of liberty, wherein imagination, the creative and\nliberating energy, the incarnation of faith, has space to roam at large.\n\nLove ever looks and tends to the future, for its work is the work of our\nperpetuation; the property of love is to hope, and only upon hopes does\nit nourish itself. And thus when love sees the fruition of its desire it\nbecomes sad, for it then discovers that what it desired was not its true\nend, and that God gave it this desire merely as a lure to spur it to\naction; it discovers that its end is further on, and it sets out again\nupon its toilsome pilgrimage through life, revolving through a constant\ncycle of illusions and disillusions. And continually it transforms its\nfrustrated hopes into memories, and from these memories it draws fresh\nhopes. From the subterranean ore of memory we extract the jewelled\nvisions of our future; imagination shapes our remembrances into hopes.\nAnd humanity is like a young girl full of longings, hungering for life\nand thirsting for love, who weaves her days with dreams, and hopes,\nhopes ever, hopes without ceasing, for the eternal and predestined\nlover, for him who, because he was destined for her from the beginning,\nfrom before the dawn of her remotest memory, from before her\ncradle-days, shall live with her and for her into the illimitable\nfuture, beyond the stretch of her furthest hopes, beyond the grave\nitself. And for this poor lovelorn humanity, as for the girl ever\nawaiting her lover, there is no kinder wish than that when the winter of\nlife shall come it may find the sweet dreams of its spring changed into\nmemories sweeter still, and memories that shall burgeon into new hopes.\nIn the days when our summer is over, what a flow of calm felicity, of\nresignation to destiny, must come from remembering hopes which have\nnever been realized and which, because they have never been realized,\npreserve their pristine purity.\n\nLove hopes, hopes ever and never wearies of hoping; and love of God, our\nfaith in God, is, above all, hope in Him. For God dies not, and he who\nhopes in God shall live for ever. And our fundamental hope, the root and\nstem of all our hopes, is the hope of eternal life.\n\nAnd if faith is the substance of hope, hope in its turn is the form of\nfaith. Until it gives us hope, our faith is a formless faith, vague,\nchaotic, potential; it is but the possibility of believing, the longing\nto believe. But we must needs believe in something, and we believe in\nwhat we hope for, we believe in hope. We remember the past, we know the\npresent, we only believe in the future. To believe what we have not seen\nis to believe what we shall see. Faith, then, I repeat once again, is\nfaith in hope; we believe what we hope for.\n\nLove makes us believe in God, in whom we hope and from whom we hope to\nreceive life to come; love makes us believe in that which the dream of\nhope creates for us.\n\nFaith is our longing for the eternal, for God; and hope is God's\nlonging, the longing of the eternal, of the divine in us, which advances\nto meet our faith and uplifts us. Man aspires to God by faith and cries\nto Him: \"I believe--give me, Lord, wherein to believe!\" And God, the\ndivinity in man, sends him hope in another life in order that he may\nbelieve in it. Hope is the reward of faith. Only he who believes truly\nhopes; and only he who truly hopes believes. We only believe what we\nhope, and we only hope what we believe.\n\nIt was hope that called God by the name of Father; and this name, so\ncomforting yet so mysterious, is still bestowed upon Him by hope. The\nfather gave us life and gives bread wherewith to sustain it, and we ask\nthe father to preserve our life for us. And if Christ was he who, with\nthe fullest heart and purest mouth, named with the name of Father his\nFather and ours, if the noblest feeling of Christianity is the feeling\nof the Fatherhood of God, it is because in Christ the human race\nsublimated its hunger for eternity.\n\nIt may perhaps be said that this longing of faith, that this hope, is\nmore than anything else an esthetic feeling. Possibly the esthetic\nfeeling enters into it, but without completely satisfying it.\n\nWe seek in art an image of eternalization. If for a brief moment our\nspirit finds peace and rest and assuagement in the contemplation of the\nbeautiful, even though it finds therein no real cure for its distress,\nit is because the beautiful is the revelation of the eternal, of the\ndivine in things, and beauty but the perpetuation of momentaneity. Just\nas truth is the goal of rational knowledge, so beauty is the goal of\nhope, which is perhaps in its essence irrational.\n\nNothing is lost, nothing wholly passes away, for in some way or another\neverything is perpetuated; and everything, after passing through time,\nreturns to eternity. The temporal world has its roots in eternity, and\nin eternity yesterday is united with to-day and to-morrow. The scenes of\nlife pass before us as in a cinematograph show, but on the further side\nof time the film is one and indivisible.\n\nPhysicists affirm that not a single particle of matter nor a single\ntremor of energy is lost, but that each is transformed and transmitted\nand persists. And can it be that any form, however fugitive it may be,\nis lost? We must needs believe--believe and hope!--that it is not, but\nthat somewhere it remains archived and perpetuated, and that there is\nsome mirror of eternity in which, without losing themselves in one\nanother, all the images that pass through time are received. Every\nimpression that reaches me remains stored up in my brain even though it\nmay be so deep or so weak that it is buried in the depths of my\nsubconsciousness; but from these depths it animates my life; and if the\nwhole of my spirit, the total content of my soul, were to awake to full\nconsciousness, all these dimly perceived and forgotten fugitive\nimpressions would come to life again, including even those which I had\nnever been aware of. I carry within me everything that has passed before\nme, and I perpetuate it with myself, and it may be that it all goes into\nmy germs, and that all my ancestors live undiminished in me and will\ncontinue so to live, united with me, in my descendants. And perhaps I,\nthe whole I, with all this universe of mine, enter into each one of my\nactions, or, at all events, that which is essential in me enters into\nthem--that which makes me myself, my individual essence.\n\nAnd how is this individual essence in each several thing--that which\nmakes it itself and not another--revealed to us save as beauty? What is\nthe beauty of anything but its eternal essence, that which unites its\npast with its future, that element of it that rests and abides in the\nwomb of eternity? or, rather, what is it but the revelation of its\ndivinity?\n\nAnd this beauty, which is the root of eternity, is revealed to us by\nlove; it is the supreme revelation of the love of God and the token of\nour ultimate victory over time. It is love that reveals to us the\neternal in us and in our neighbours.\n\nIs it the beautiful, the eternal, in things, that awakens and kindles\nour love for them, or is it our love for things that reveals to us the\nbeautiful, the eternal, in them? Is not beauty perhaps a creation of\nlove, in the same way and in the same sense that the sensible world is a\ncreation of the instinct of preservation and the supersensible world of\nthat of perpetuation? Is not beauty, and together with beauty eternity,\na creation of love? \"Though our outward man perish,\" says the Apostle,\n\"yet the inward man is renewed day by day\" (2 Cor. iv. 16). The man of\npassing appearances perishes and passes away with them; the man of\nreality remains and grows. \"For our light affliction, which is but for a\nmoment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory\"\n(ver. 17). Our suffering causes us anguish, and this anguish, bursting\nbecause of its own fullness, seems to us consolation. \"While we look not\nat the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for\nthe things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not\nseen are eternal\" (ver. 18).\n\nThis suffering gives hope, which is the beautiful in life, the supreme\nbeauty, or the supreme consolation. And since love is full of suffering,\nsince love is compassion and pity, beauty springs from compassion and is\nsimply the temporal consolation that compassion seeks. A tragic\nconsolation! And the supreme beauty is that of tragedy. The\nconsciousness that everything passes away, that we ourselves pass away,\nand that everything that is ours and everything that environs us passes\naway, fills us with anguish, and this anguish itself reveals to us the\nconsolation of that which does not pass away, of the eternal, of the\nbeautiful.\n\nAnd this beauty thus revealed, this perpetuation of momentaneity, only\nrealizes itself practically, only lives through the work of charity.\nHope in action is charity, and beauty in action is goodness.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCharity, which eternalizes everything it loves, and in giving us the\ngoodness of it brings to light its hidden beauty, has its root in the\nlove of God, or, if you like, in charity towards God, in pity for God.\nLove, pity, personalizes everything, we have said; in discovering the\nsuffering in everything and in personalizing everything, it personalizes\nthe Universe itself as well--for the Universe also suffers--and it\ndiscovers God to us. For God is revealed to us because He suffers and\nbecause we suffer; because He suffers He demands our love, and because\nwe suffer He gives us His love, and He covers our anguish with the\neternal and infinite anguish.\n\nThis was the scandal of Christianity among Jews and Greeks, among\nPharisees and Stoics, and this, which was its scandal of old, the\nscandal of the Cross, is still its scandal to-day, and will continue to\nbe so, even among Christians themselves--the scandal of a God who\nbecomes man in order that He may suffer and die and rise again, because\nHe has suffered and died, the scandal of a God subject to suffering and\ndeath. And this truth that God suffers--a truth that appals the mind of\nman--is the revelation of the very heart of the Universe and of its\nmystery, the revelation that God revealed to us when He sent His Son in\norder that he might redeem us by suffering and dying. It was the\nrevelation of the divine in suffering, for only that which suffers is\ndivine.\n\nAnd men made a god of this Christ who suffered, and through him they\ndiscovered the eternal essence of a living, human God--that is, of a God\nwho suffers--it is only the dead, the inhuman, that does not suffer--a\nGod who loves and thirsts for love, for pity, a God who is a person.\nWhosoever knows not the Son will never know the Father, and the Father\nis only known through the Son; whosoever knows not the Son of Man--he\nwho suffers bloody anguish and the pangs of a breaking heart, whose soul\nis heavy within him even unto death, who suffers the pain that kills and\nbrings to life again--will never know the Father, and can know nothing\nof the suffering God.\n\nHe who does not suffer, and who does not suffer because he does not\nlive, is that logical and frozen _ens realissimum_, the _primum movens_,\nthat impassive entity, which because of its impassivity is nothing but a\npure idea. The category does not suffer, but neither does it live or\nexist as a person. And how is the world to derive its origin and life\nfrom an impassive idea? Such a world would be but the idea of the world.\nBut the world suffers, and suffering is the sense of the flesh of\nreality; it is the spirit's sense of its mass and substance; it is the\nself's sense of its own tangibility; it is immediate reality.\n\nSuffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it\nis only suffering that makes us persons. And suffering is universal,\nsuffering is that which unites all us living beings together; it is the\nuniversal or divine blood that flows through us all. That which we call\nwill, what is it but suffering?\n\nAnd suffering has its degrees, according to the depth of its\npenetration, from the suffering that floats upon the sea of appearances\nto the eternal anguish, the source of the tragic sense of life, which\nseeks a habitation in the depths of the eternal and there awakens\nconsolation; from the physical suffering that contorts our bodies to the\nreligious anguish that flings us upon the bosom of God, there to be\nwatered by the divine tears.\n\nAnguish is something far deeper, more intimate, and more spiritual than\nsuffering. We are wont to feel the touch of anguish even in the midst of\nthat which we call happiness, and even because of this happiness itself,\nto which we cannot resign ourselves and before which we tremble. The\nhappy who resign themselves to their apparent happiness, to a transitory\nhappiness, seem to be as men without substance, or, at any rate, men who\nhave not discovered this substance in themselves, who have not touched\nit. Such men are usually incapable of loving or of being loved, and they\ngo through life without really knowing either pain or bliss.\n\nThere is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to\nchoose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. And love leads us\nto no other happiness than that of love itself and its tragic\nconsolation of uncertain hope. The moment love becomes happy and\nsatisfied, it no longer desires and it is no longer love. The\nsatisfied, the happy, do not love; they fall asleep in habit, near\nneighbour to annihilation. To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to\nbe. Man is the more man--that is, the more divine--the greater his\ncapacity for suffering, or, rather, for anguish.\n\nAt our coming into the world it is given to us to choose between love\nand happiness, and we wish--poor fools!--for both: the happiness of\nloving and the love of happiness. But we ought to ask for the gift of\nlove and not of happiness, and to be preserved from dozing away into\nhabit, lest we should fall into a fast sleep, a sleep without waking,\nand so lose our consciousness beyond power of recovery. We ought to ask\nGod to make us conscious of ourselves in ourselves, in our suffering.\n\nWhat is Fate, what is Fatality, but the brotherhood of love and\nsuffering? What is it but that terrible mystery in virtue of which love\ndies as soon as it touches the happiness towards which it reaches out,\nand true happiness dies with it? Love and suffering mutually engender\none another, and love is charity and compassion, and the love that is\nnot charitable and compassionate is not love. Love, in a word, is\nresigned despair.\n\nThat which the mathematicians call the problem of maxima and minima,\nwhich is also called the law of economy, is the formula for all\nexistential--that is, passional--activity. In material mechanics and in\nsocial mechanics, in industry and in political economy, every problem\nresolves itself into an attempt to obtain the greatest possible\nresulting utility with the least possible effort, the greatest income\nwith the least expenditure, the most pleasure with the least pain. And\nthe terrible and tragic formula of the inner, spiritual life is either\nto obtain the most happiness with the least love, or the most love with\nthe least happiness. And it is necessary to choose between the one and\nthe other, and to know that he who approaches the infinite of love, the\nlove that is infinite, approaches the zero of happiness, the supreme\nanguish. And in reaching this zero he is beyond the reach of the misery\nthat kills. \"Be not, and thou shalt be mightier than aught that is,\"\nsaid Brother Juan de los Angeles in one of his _Di\u00e1logos de la conquista\ndel reino de Dios_ (Dial. iii. 8).\n\nAnd there is something still more anguishing than suffering. A man about\nto receive a much-dreaded blow expects to have to suffer so severely\nthat he may even succumb to the suffering, and when the blow falls he\nfeels scarcely any pain; but afterwards, when he has come to himself and\nis conscious of his insensibility, he is seized with terror, a tragic\nterror, the most terrible of all, and choking with anguish he cries out:\n\"Can it be that I no longer exist?\" Which would you find most\nappalling--to feel such a pain as would deprive you of your senses on\nbeing pierced through with a white-hot iron, or to see yourself thus\npierced through without feeling any pain? Have you never felt the\nhorrible terror of feeling yourself incapable of suffering and of tears?\nSuffering tells us that we exist; suffering tells us that those whom we\nlove exist; suffering tells us that the world in which we live exists;\nand suffering tells us that God exists and suffers; but it is the\nsuffering of anguish, the anguish of surviving and being eternal.\nAnguish discovers God to us and makes us love Him.\n\nTo believe in God is to love Him, and to love Him is to feel Him\nsuffering, to pity Him.\n\nIt may perhaps appear blasphemous to say that God suffers, for suffering\nimplies limitation. Nevertheless, God, the Consciousness of the\nUniverse, is limited by the brute matter in which He lives, by the\nunconscious, from which He seeks to liberate Himself and to liberate us.\nAnd we, in our turn, must seek to liberate Him. God suffers in each and\nall of us, in each and all of the consciousnesses imprisoned in\ntransitory matter, and we all suffer in Him. Religious anguish is but\nthe divine suffering, the feeling that God suffers in me and that I\nsuffer in Him.\n\nThe universal suffering is the anguish of all in seeking to be all else\nbut without power to achieve it, the anguish of each in being he that he\nis, being at the same time all that he is not, and being so for ever.\nThe essence of a being is not only its endeavour to persist for ever, as\nSpinoza taught us, but also its endeavour to universalize itself; it is\nthe hunger and thirst for eternity and infinity. Every created being\ntends not only to preserve itself in itself, but to perpetuate itself,\nand, moreover, to invade all other beings, to be others without ceasing\nto be itself, to extend its limits to the infinite, but without breaking\nthem. It does not wish to throw down its walls and leave everything laid\nflat, common and undefended, confounding and losing its own\nindividuality, but it wishes to carry its walls to the extreme limits of\ncreation and to embrace everything within them. It seeks the maximum of\nindividuality with the maximum also of personality; it aspires to the\nidentification of the Universe with itself; it aspires to God.\n\nAnd this vast I, within which each individual I seeks to put the\nUniverse--what is it but God? And because I aspire to God, I love Him;\nand this aspiration of mine towards God is my love for Him, and just as\nI suffer in being He, He also suffers in being I, and in being each one\nof us.\n\nI am well aware that in spite of my warning that I am attempting here to\ngive a logical form to a system of a-logical feelings, I shall be\nscandalizing not a few of my readers in speaking of a God who suffers,\nand in applying to God Himself, as God, the passion of Christ. The God\nof so-called rational theology excludes in effect all suffering. And the\nreader will no doubt think that this idea of suffering can have only a\nmetaphorical value when applied to God, similar to that which is\nsupposed to attach to those passages in the Old Testament which\ndescribe the human passions of the God of Israel. For anger, wrath, and\nvengeance are impossible without suffering. And as for saying that God\nsuffers through being bound by matter, I shall be told that, in the\nwords of Plotinus (_Second Ennead_, ix., 7), the Universal Soul cannot\nbe bound by the very thing--namely, bodies or matter--which is bound by\nIt.\n\nHerein is involved the whole problem of the origin of evil, the evil of\nsin no less than the evil of pain, for if God does not suffer, He causes\nsuffering; and if His life, since God lives, is not a process of\nrealizing in Himself a total consciousness which is continually becoming\nfuller--that is to say, which is continually becoming more and more\nGod--it is a process of drawing all things towards Himself, of imparting\nHimself to all, of constraining the consciousness of each part to enter\ninto the consciousness of the All, which is He Himself, until at last He\ncomes to be all in all--_panta en paot_, according to the expression of\nSt. Paul, the first Christian mystic. We will discuss this more fully,\nhowever, in the next chapter on the apocatastasis or beatific union.\n\nFor the present let it suffice to say that there is a vast current of\nsuffering urging living beings towards one another, constraining them to\nlove one another and to seek one another, and to endeavour to complete\none another, and to be each himself and others at the same time. In God\neverything lives, and in His suffering everything suffers, and in loving\nGod we love His creatures in Him, just as in loving and pitying His\ncreatures we love and pity God in them. No single soul can be free so\nlong as there is anything enslaved in God's world, neither can God\nHimself, who lives in the soul of each one of us, be free so long as our\nsoul is not free.\n\nMy most immediate sensation is the sense and love of my own misery, my\nanguish, the compassion I feel for myself, the love I bear for myself.\nAnd when this compassion is vital and superabundant, it overflows from\nme upon others, and from the excess of my own compassion I come to have\ncompassion for my neighbours. My own misery is so great that the\ncompassion for myself which it awakens within me soon overflows and\nreveals to me the universal misery.\n\nAnd what is charity but the overflow of pity? What is it but reflected\npity that overflows and pours itself out in a flood of pity for the woes\nof others and in the exercise of charity?\n\nWhen the overplus of our pity leads us to the consciousness of God\nwithin us, it fills us with so great anguish for the misery shed abroad\nin all things, that we have to pour our pity abroad, and this we do in\nthe form of charity. And in this pouring abroad of our pity we\nexperience relief and the painful sweetness of goodness. This is what\nTeresa de Jes\u00fas, the mystical doctor, called \"sweet-tasting suffering\"\n(_dolor sabroso_), and she knew also the lore of suffering loves. It is\nas when one looks upon some thing of beauty and feels the necessity of\nmaking others sharers in it. For the creative impulse, in which charity\nconsists, is the work of suffering love.\n\nWe feel, in effect, a satisfaction in doing good when good superabounds\nwithin us, when we are swollen with pity; and we are swollen with pity\nwhen God, filling our soul, gives us the suffering sensation of\nuniversal life, of the universal longing for eternal divinization. For\nwe are not merely placed side by side with others in the world, having\nno common root with them, neither is their lot indifferent to us, but\ntheir pain hurts us, their anguish fills us with anguish, and we feel\nour community of origin and of suffering even without knowing it.\nSuffering, and pity which is born of suffering, are what reveal to us\nthe brotherhood of every existing thing that possesses life and more or\nless of consciousness. \"Brother Wolf\" St. Francis of Assisi called the\npoor wolf that feels a painful hunger for the sheep, and feels, too,\nperhaps, the pain of having to devour them; and this brotherhood reveals\nto us the Fatherhood of God, reveals to us that God is a Father and that\nHe exists. And as a Father He shelters our common misery.\n\nCharity, then, is the impulse to liberate myself and all my fellows from\nsuffering, and to liberate God, who embraces us all.\n\nSuffering is a spiritual thing. It is the most immediate revelation of\nconsciousness, and it may be that our body was given us simply in order\nthat suffering might be enabled to manifest itself. A man who had never\nknown suffering, either in greater or less degree, would scarcely\npossess consciousness of himself. The child first cries at birth when\nthe air, entering into his lungs and limiting him, seems to say to him:\nYou have to breathe me in order that you may live!\n\nWe must needs believe with faith, whatever counsels reason may give us,\nthat the material or sensible world which the senses create for us\nexists solely in order to embody and sustain that other spiritual or\nimaginable world which the imagination creates for us. Consciousness\ntends to be ever more and more consciousness, to intensify its\nconsciousness, to acquire full consciousness of its complete self, of\nthe whole of its content. We must needs believe with faith, whatever\ncounsels reason may give us, that in the depths of our own bodies, in\nanimals, in plants, in rocks, in everything that lives, in all the\nUniverse, there is a spirit that strives to know itself, to acquire\nconsciousness of itself, to be itself--for to be oneself is to know\noneself--to be pure spirit; and since it can only achieve this by means\nof the body, by means of matter, it creates and makes use of matter at\nthe same time that it remains the prisoner of it. The face can only see\nitself when portrayed in the mirror, but in order to see itself it must\nremain the prisoner of the mirror in which it sees itself, and the image\nwhich it sees therein is as the mirror distorts it; and if the mirror\nbreaks, the image is broken; and if the mirror is blurred, the image is\nblurred.\n\nSpirit finds itself limited by the matter in which it has to live and\nacquire consciousness of itself, just as thought is limited by the word\nin which as a social medium it is incarnated. Without matter there is no\nspirit, but matter makes spirit suffer by limiting it. And suffering is\nsimply the obstacle which matter opposes to spirit; it is the clash of\nthe conscious with the unconscious.\n\nSuffering is, in effect, the barrier which unconsciousness, matter, sets\nup against consciousness, spirit; it is the resistance to will, the\nlimit which the visible universe imposes upon God; it is the wall that\nconsciousness runs up against when it seeks to extend itself at the\nexpense of unconsciousness; it is the resistance which unconsciousness\nopposes to its penetration by consciousness.\n\nAlthough in deference to authority we may believe, we do not in fact\nknow, that we possess heart, stomach, or lungs so long as they do not\ncause us discomfort, suffering, or anguish. Physical suffering, or even\ndiscomfort, is what reveals to us our own internal core. And the same is\ntrue of spiritual suffering and anguish, for we do not take account of\nthe fact that we possess a soul until it hurts us.\n\nAnguish is that which makes consciousness return upon itself. He who\nknows no anguish knows what he does and what he thinks, but he does not\ntruly know that he does it and that he thinks it. He thinks, but he does\nnot think that he thinks, and his thoughts are as if they were not his.\nNeither does he properly belong to himself. For it is only anguish, it\nis only the passionate longing never to die, that makes a human spirit\nmaster of itself.\n\nPain, which is a kind of dissolution, makes us discover our internal\ncore; and in the supreme dissolution, which is death, we shall, at last,\nthrough the pain of annihilation, arrive at the core of our temporal\ncore--at God, whom in our spiritual anguish we breathe and learn to\nlove.\n\nEven so must we believe with faith, whatever counsels reason may give\nus.\n\nThe origin of evil, as many discovered of old, is nothing other than\nwhat is called by another name the inertia of matter, and, as applied to\nthe things of the spirit, sloth. And not without truth has it been said\nthat sloth is the mother of all vices, not forgetting that the supreme\nsloth is that of not longing madly for immortality.\n\nConsciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of\neternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God--these are never\nsatisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and to be all other\nconsciousnesses without ceasing to be itself: it seeks to be God. And\nmatter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing,\nits thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! and\nmatter answers: I wish not to be!\n\nAnd in the order of human life, the individual would tend, under the\nsole instigation of the instinct of preservation, the creator of the\nmaterial world, to destruction, to annihilation, if it were not for\nsociety, which, in implanting in him the instinct of perpetuation, the\ncreator of the spiritual world, lifts and impels him towards the All,\ntowards immortalization. And everything that man does as a mere\nindividual, opposed to society, for the sake of his own preservation,\nand at the expense of society, if need be, is bad; and everything that\nhe does as a social person, for the sake of the society in which he\nhimself is included, for the sake of its perpetuation and of the\nperpetuation of himself in it, is good. And many of those who seem to be\nthe greatest egoists, trampling everything under their feet in their\nzeal to bring their work to a successful issue, are in reality men\nwhose souls are aflame and overflowing with charity, for they subject\nand subordinate their petty personal I to the social I that has a\nmission to accomplish.\n\nHe who would tie the working of love, of spiritualization, of\nliberation, to transitory and individual forms, crucifies God in matter;\nhe crucifies God who makes the ideal subservient to his own temporal\ninterests or worldly glory. And such a one is a deicide.\n\nThe work of charity, of the love of God, is to endeavour to liberate God\nfrom brute matter, to endeavour to give consciousness to everything, to\nspiritualize or universalize everything; it is to dream that the very\nrocks may find a voice and work in accordance with the spirit of this\ndream; it is to dream that everything that exists may become conscious,\nthat the Word may become life.\n\nWe have but to look at the eucharistic symbol to see an instance of it.\nThe Word has been imprisoned in a piece of material bread, and it has\nbeen imprisoned therein to the end that we may eat it, and in eating it\nmake it our own, part and parcel of our body in which the spirit dwells,\nand that it may beat in our heart and think in our brain and be\nconsciousness. It has been imprisoned in this bread in order that, after\nbeing buried in our body, it may come to life again in our spirit.\n\nAnd we must spiritualize everything. And this we shall accomplish by\ngiving our spirit, which grows the more the more it is distributed, to\nall men and to all things. And we give our spirit when we invade other\nspirits and make ourselves the master of them.\n\nAll this is to be believed with faith, whatever counsels reason may give\nus.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now we are about to see what practical consequences all these more\nor less fantastical doctrines may have in regard to logic, to esthetics,\nand, above all, to ethics--their religious concretion, in a word. And\nperhaps then they will gain more justification in the eyes of the\nreader who, in spite of my warnings, has hitherto been looking for the\nscientific or even philosophic development of an irrational system.\n\nI think it may not be superfluous to recall to the reader once again\nwhat I said at the conclusion of the sixth chapter, that entitled \"In\nthe Depths of the Abyss\"; but we now approach the practical or\npragmatical part of this treatise. First, however, we must see how the\nreligious sense may become concrete in the hopeful vision of another\nlife.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[44] Reinold Seeberg, _Christliche-protestantische Ethik_ in\n_Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_\nseries.\n\n[45] _Cf._ St. Thomas Aquinas, _Summa_, secunda secund\u00e6, qu\u00e6stio iv.,\nart. 2.\n\n[46] \"_Qu\u00e9 es Verdad?_\" (\"What is truth?\"), published in _La Espa\u00f1a\nModerna_, March, 1906, vol. 207 (reprinted in the edition of collected\n_Ensayos_, vol. vi., Madrid, 1918).\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nRELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND AND THE APOCATASTASIS\n\n_Kai gar is\u00f4s kai malista prepei mellonta echeise apod\u00eamein diaskopein te\nkai muthologein peri t\u00eas apod\u00eamias t\u00eas echei, poian tina aut\u00ean oiometha\neinai._--PLATO: _Ph\u00e6do_.\n\n\nReligion is founded upon faith, hope, and charity, which in their turn\nare founded upon the feeling of divinity and of God. Of faith in God is\nborn our faith in men, of hope in God hope in men, and of charity or\npiety towards God--for as Cicero said,[47] _est enim pietas iustitia\nadversum deos_--charity towards men. In God is resumed not only\nHumanity, but the whole Universe, and the Universe spiritualized and\npenetrated with consciousness, for as the Christian Faith teaches, God\nshall at last be all in all. St. Teresa said, and Miguel de Molinos\nrepeated with a harsher and more despairing inflection, that the soul\nmust realize that nothing exists but itself and God.\n\nAnd this relation with God, this more or less intimate union with Him,\nis what we call religion.\n\nWhat is religion? In what does it differ from the religious sense and\nhow are the two related? Every man's definition of religion is based\nupon his own inward experience of it rather than upon his observation of\nit in others, nor indeed is it possible to define it without in some way\nor another experiencing it. Tacitus said (_Hist._ v. 4), speaking of the\nJews, that they regarded as profane everything that the Romans held to\nbe sacred, and that what was sacred to them was to the Romans impure:\n_profana illic omnia qu\u00e6 apud nos sacra, rursum conversa apud illos qu\u00e6\nnobis incesta_. Therefore he, the Roman, describes the Jews as a people\ndominated by superstition and hostile to religion, _gens superstitioni\nobnoxia, religionibus adversa_, while as regards Christianity, with\nwhich he was very imperfectly acquainted, scarcely distinguishing it\nfrom Judaism, he deemed it to be a pernicious superstition, _existialis\nsuperstitio_, inspired by a hatred of mankind, _odium generis humani_\n(_Ab excessu Aug._, xv., 44). And there have been many others who have\nshared his opinion. But where does religion end and superstition begin,\nor perhaps rather we should say at what point does superstition merge\ninto religion? What is the criterion by means of which we discriminate\nbetween them?\n\nIt would be of little profit to recapitulate here, even summarily, the\nprincipal definitions, each bearing the impress of the personal feeling\nof its definer, which have been given of religion. Religion is better\ndescribed than defined and better felt than described. But if there is\nany one definition that latterly has obtained acceptance, it is that of\nSchleiermacher, to the effect that religion consists in the simple\nfeeling of a relationship of dependence upon something above us and a\ndesire to establish relations with this mysterious power. Nor is there\nmuch amiss with the statement of W. Hermann[48] that the religious\nlonging of man is a desire for truth concerning his human existence. And\nto cut short these extraneous citations, I will end with one from the\njudicious and perspicacious Cournot: \"Religious manifestations are the\nnecessary consequence of man's predisposition to believe in the\nexistence of an invisible, supernatural and miraculous world, a\npredisposition which it has been possible to consider sometimes as a\nreminiscence of an anterior state, sometimes as an intimation of a\nfuture destiny\" (_Trait\u00e9 de l'encha\u00eenement des id\u00e9es fondamentales dans\nles sciences et dans l'histoire_, \u00a7 396). And it is this problem of\nhuman destiny, of eternal life, or of the human finality of the Universe\nor of God, that we have now reached. All the highways of religion lead\nup to this, for it is the very essence of all religion.\n\nBeginning with the savage's personalization of the whole Universe in his\nfetich, religion has its roots in the vital necessity of giving human\nfinality to the Universe, to God, and this necessity obliges it,\ntherefore, to attribute to the Universe, to God, consciousness of self\nand of purpose. And it may be said that religion is simply union with\nGod, each one interpreting God according to his own sense of Him. God\ngives transcendent meaning and finality to life; but He gives it\nrelatively to each one of us who believe in Him. And thus God is for man\nas much as man is for God, for God in becoming man, in becoming human,\nhas given Himself to man because of His love of him.\n\nAnd this religious longing for union with God is a longing for a union\nthat cannot be consummated in science or in art, but only in life. \"He\nwho possesses science and art, has religion; he who possesses neither\nscience nor art, let him get religion,\" said Goethe in one of his\nfrequent accesses of paganism. And yet in spite of what he said, he\nhimself, Goethe...?\n\nAnd to wish that we may be united with God is not to wish that we may be\nlost and submerged in Him, for this loss and submersion of self ends at\nlast in the complete dissolution of self in the dreamless sleep of\nNirvana; it is to wish to possess Him rather than to be possessed by\nHim. When his disciples, amazed at his saying that it was impossible for\na rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, asked Jesus who then\ncould be saved, the Master replied that with men it was impossible but\nnot with God; and then said Peter, \"Behold, we have forsaken all and\nfollowed thee; what shall we have therefore?\" And the reply of Jesus\nwas, not that they should be absorbed in the Father, but that they\nshould sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel\n(Matt. xix. 23-26).\n\nIt was a Spaniard, and very emphatically a Spaniard, Miguel de Molinos,\nwho said in his _Gu\u00eda Espiritual_[49] that \"he who would attain to the\nmystical science must abandon and be detached from five things: first,\nfrom creatures; second, from temporal things; third, from the very gifts\nof the Holy Spirit; fourth, from himself; and fifth, he must be detached\neven from God.\" And he adds that \"this last is the completest of all,\nbecause that soul only that knows how to be so detached is that which\nattains to being lost in God, and only the soul that attains to being so\nlost succeeds in finding itself.\" Emphatically a true Spaniard, Molinos,\nand truly Spanish is this paradoxical expression of quietism or rather\nof nihilism--for he himself elsewhere speaks of annihilation--and not\nless Spanish, nay, perhaps even more Spanish, were the Jesuits who\nattacked him, upholding the prerogatives of the All against the claims\nof Nothingness. For religion is not the longing for self-annihilation,\nbut for self-completion, it is the longing not for death but for life.\n\"The eternal religion of the inward essence of man ... the individual\ndream of the heart, is the worship of his own being, the adoration of\nlife,\" as the tortured soul of Flaubert was intimately aware (_Par les\nchamps et par les gr\u00e8ves_, vii.).\n\nWhen at the beginning of the so-called modern age, at the Renaissance,\nthe pagan sense of religion came to life again, it took concrete form in\nthe knightly ideal with its codes of love and honour. But it was a\npaganism Christianized, baptized. \"Woman--_la donna_--was the divinity\nenshrined within those savage breasts. Whosoever will investigate the\nmemorials of primitive times will find this ideal of woman in its full\nforce and purity; the Universe is woman. And so it was in Germany, in\nFrance, in Provence, in Spain, in Italy, at the beginning of the modern\nage. History was cast in this mould; Trojans and Romans were conceived\nas knights-errant, and so too were Arabs, Saracens, Turks, the Sultan\nand Saladin.... In this universal fraternity mingle angels, saints,\nmiracles and paradise, strangely blended with the fantasy and\nvoluptuousness of the Oriental world, and all baptized in the name of\nChivalry.\" Thus, in his _Storia della Letteratura italiana_, ii., writes\nFrancesco de Sanctis, and in an earlier passage he informs us that for\nthat breed of men \"in paradise itself the lover's delight was to look\nupon his lady--_Madonna_--and that he had no desire to go thither if he\nmight not go in his lady's company.\" What, in fact, was Chivalry--which\nCervantes, intending to kill it, afterwards purified and Christianized\nin _Don Quixote_--but a real though distorted religion, a hybrid between\npaganism and Christianity, whose gospel perhaps was the legend of\nTristan and Iseult? And did not even the Christianity of the\nmystics--those knights-errant of the spirit--possibly reach its\nculminating-point in the worship of the divine woman, the Virgin Mary?\nWhat else was the Mariolatry of a St. Bonaventura, the troubadour of\nMary? And this sentiment found its inspiration in love of the fountain\nof life, of that which saves us from death.\n\nBut as the Renaissance advanced men turned from the religion of woman to\nthe religion of science; desire, the foundation of which was curiosity,\nended in curiosity, in eagerness to taste of the fruit of the tree of\ngood and evil. Europe flocked to the University of Bologna in search of\nlearning. Chivalry was succeeded by Platonism. Men sought to discover\nthe mystery of the world and of life. But it was really in order to save\nlife, which they had also sought to save in the worship of woman. Human\nconsciousness sought to penetrate the Universal Consciousness, but its\nreal object, whether it was aware of it or not, was to save itself.\n\nFor the truth is that we feel and imagine the Universal\nConsciousness--and in this feeling and imagination religious experience\nconsists--simply in order that thereby we may save our own individual\nconsciousnesses. And how?\n\nOnce again I must repeat that the longing for the immortality of the\nsoul, for the permanence, in some form or another, of our personal and\nindividual consciousness, is as much of the essence of religion as is\nthe longing that there may be a God. The one does not exist apart from\nthe other, the reason being that fundamentally they are one and the same\nthing. But as soon as we attempt to give a concrete and rational form to\nthis longing for immortality and permanence, to define it to ourselves,\nwe encounter even more difficulties than we encountered in our attempt\nto rationalize God.\n\nThe universal consent of mankind has again been invoked as a means of\njustifying this immortal longing for immortality to our own feeble\nreason. _Permanere animos arbitratur consensu nationum omnium_, said\nCicero, echoing the opinion of the ancients (_Tuscul. Qu\u00e6st._, xvi.,\n36). But this same recorder of his own feelings confessed that, although\nwhen he read the arguments in favour of the immortality of the soul in\nthe _Ph\u00e6do_ of Plato he was compelled to assent to them, as soon as he\nput the book aside and began to revolve the problem in his own mind, all\nhis previous assent melted away, _assentio omnis illa illabitur_ (cap.\nxi., 25). And what happened to Cicero happens to us all, and it happened\nlikewise to Swedenborg, the most daring visionary of the other world.\nSwedenborg admitted that he who discourses of life after death, putting\naside all erudite notions concerning the soul and its mode of union with\nthe body, believes that after death he shall live in a glorious joy and\nvision, as a man among angels; but when he begins to reflect upon the\ndoctrine of the union of the soul with the body, or upon the\nhypothetical opinion concerning the soul, doubts arise in him as to\nwhether the soul is thus or otherwise, and when these doubts arise, his\nformer idea is dissipated (_De c\u00e6lo et inferno_, \u00a7 183). Nevertheless,\nas Cournot says, \"it is the destiny that awaits me, _me_ or my _person_,\nthat moves, perturbs and consoles me, that makes me capable of\nabnegation and sacrifice, whatever be the origin, the nature or the\nessence of this inexplicable bond of union, in the absence of which the\nphilosophers are pleased to determine that my person must disappear\"\n(_Trait\u00e9_, etc., \u00a7 297).\n\nMust we then embrace the pure and naked faith in an eternal life without\ntrying to represent it to ourselves? This is impossible; it is beyond\nour power to bring ourselves or accustom ourselves to do so. And\nnevertheless there are some who call themselves Christians and yet leave\nalmost altogether on one side this question of representation. Take any\nwork of theology informed by the most enlightened--that is, the most\nrationalistic and liberal--Protestantism; take, for instance, the\n_Dogmatik_ of Dr. Julius Kaftan, and of the 668 pages of which the sixth\nedition, that of 1909, consists, you will find only one, the last, that\nis devoted to this problem. And in this page, after affirming that\nChrist is not only the beginning and middle but also the end and\nconsummation of History, and that those who are in Christ will attain to\nfullness of life, the eternal life of those who are in Christ, not a\nsingle word as to what that life may be. Half a dozen words at most\nabout eternal death, that is, hell, \"for its existence is demanded by\nthe moral character of faith and of Christian hope.\" Its moral\ncharacter, eh? not its religious character, for I am not aware that the\nlatter knows any such exigency. And all this inspired by a prudent\nagnostic parsimony.\n\nYes, the prudent, the rational, and, some will say, the pious,\nattitude, is not to seek to penetrate into mysteries that are hidden\nfrom our knowledge, not to insist upon shaping a plastic representation\nof eternal glory, such as that of the _Divina Commedia_. True faith,\ntrue Christian piety, we shall be told, consists in resting upon the\nconfidence that God, by the grace of Christ, will, in some way or\nanother, make us live in Him, in His Son; that, as our destiny is in His\nalmighty hands, we should surrender ourselves to Him, in the full\nassurance that He will do with us what is best for the ultimate end of\nlife, of spirit and of the universe. Such is the teaching that has\ntraversed many centuries, and was notably prominent in the period\nbetween Luther and Kant.\n\nAnd nevertheless men have not ceased endeavouring to imagine to\nthemselves what this eternal life may be, nor will they cease their\nendeavours so long as they are men and not merely thinking machines.\nThere are books of theology--or of what passes for theology--full of\ndisquisitions upon the conditions under which the blessed dead live in\nparadise, upon their mode of enjoyment, upon the properties of the\nglorious body, for without some form of body the soul cannot be\nconceived.\n\nAnd to this same necessity, the real necessity of forming to ourselves a\nconcrete representation of what this other life may be, must in great\npart be referred the indestructible vitality of doctrines such as those\nof spiritualism, metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls from star\nto star, and the like; doctrines which as often as they are pronounced\nto be defeated and dead, are found to have come to life again, clothed\nin some more or less new form. And it is merely supine to be content to\nignore them and not to seek to discover their permanent and living\nessence. Man will never willingly abandon his attempt to form a concrete\nrepresentation of the other life.\n\nBut is an eternal and endless life after death indeed thinkable? How\ncan we conceive the life of a disembodied spirit? How can we conceive\nsuch a spirit? How can we conceive a pure consciousness, without a\ncorporal organism? Descartes divided the world into thought and\nextension, a dualism which was imposed upon him by the Christian dogma\nof the immortality of the soul. But is extension, is matter, that which\nthinks and is spiritualized, or is thought that which is extended and\nmaterialized? The weightiest questions of metaphysics arise practically\nout of our desire to arrive at an understanding of the possibility of\nour immortality--from this fact they derive their value and cease to be\nmerely the idle discussions of fruitless curiosity. For the truth is\nthat metaphysics has no value save in so far as it attempts to explain\nin what way our vital longing can or cannot be realized. And thus it is\nthat there is and always will be a rational metaphysic and a vital\nmetaphysic, in perennial conflict with one another, the one setting out\nfrom the notion of cause, the other from the notion of substance.\n\nAnd even if we were to succeed in imagining personal immortality, might\nwe not possibly feel it to be something no less terrible than its\nnegation? \"Calypso was inconsolable at the departure of Ulysses; in her\nsorrow she was dismayed at being immortal,\" said the gentle, the\nmystical F\u00e9nelon at the beginning of his _T\u00e9l\u00e9maque_. Was it not a kind\nof doom that the ancient gods, no less than the demons, were subject\nto--the deprivation of the power to commit suicide?\n\nWhen Jesus took Peter and James and John up into a high mountain and was\ntransfigured before them, his raiment shining as white as snow, and\nMoses and Elias appeared and talked with him, Peter said to the Master:\n\"Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three\ntabernacles; one for thee and one for Moses and one for Elias,\" for he\nwished to eternalize that moment. And as they came down from the\nmountain, Jesus charged them that they should tell no man what they had\nseen until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead. And they,\nkeeping this saying to themselves, questioned one with another what this\nrising from the dead should mean, as men not understanding the purport\nof it. And it was after this that Jesus met the father whose son was\npossessed with a dumb spirit and who cried out to him, \"Lord, I believe;\nhelp thou mine unbelief\" (Mark ix.).\n\nThose three apostles did not understand what this rising from the dead\nmeant. Neither did those Sadducees who asked the Master whose wife she\nshould be in the resurrection who in this life had had seven husbands\n(Matt. xxii.); and it was then that Jesus said that God is not the God\nof the dead, but of the living. And the other life is not, in fact,\nthinkable to us except under the same forms as those of this earthly and\ntransitory life. Nor is the mystery at all clarified by that metaphor of\nthe grain and the wheat that it bears, with which Paul answers the\nquestion, \"How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?\"\n(1 Cor. xv. 35).\n\nHow can a human soul live and enjoy God eternally without losing its\nindividual personality--that is to say, without losing itself? What is\nit to enjoy God? What is eternity as opposed to time? Does the soul\nchange or does it not change in the other life? If it does not change,\nhow does it live? And if it changes, how does it preserve its\nindividuality through so vast a period of time? For though the other\nlife may exclude space, it cannot exclude time, as Cournot observes in\nthe work quoted above.\n\nIf there is life in heaven there is change. Swedenborg remarked that the\nangels change, because the delight of the celestial life would gradually\nlose its value if they always enjoyed it in its fullness, and because\nangels, like men, love themselves, and he who loves himself experiences\nchanges of state; and he adds further that at times the angels are sad,\nand that he, Swedenborg, discoursed with some when they were sad (_De\nC\u00e6lo et Inferno_, \u00a7\u00a7 158, 160). In any case, it is impossible for us to\nconceive life without change, change of growth or of diminution, of\nsadness or of joy, of love or of hate.\n\nIn effect, an eternal life is unthinkable and an eternal life of\nabsolute felicity, of beatific vision, is more unthinkable still.\n\nAnd what precisely is this beatific vision? We observe in the first\nplace that it is called vision and not action, something passive being\ntherefore presupposed. And does not this beatific vision suppose loss of\npersonal consciousness? A saint in heaven, says Bossuet, is a being who\nis scarcely sensible of himself, so completely is he possessed by God\nand immerged in His glory.... Our attention cannot stay on the saint,\nbecause one finds him outside of himself, and subject by an unchangeable\nlove to the source of his being and his happiness (_Du culte qui est d\u00fb\n\u00e0 Dieu_). And these are the words of Bossuet, the antiquietist. This\nloving vision of God supposes an absorption in Him. He who in a state of\nblessedness enjoys God in His fullness must perforce neither think of\nhimself, nor remember himself, nor have any consciousness of himself,\nbut be in perpetual ecstasy (_ekstasis_) outside of himself, in a\ncondition of alienation. And the ecstasy that the mystics describe is a\nprelude of this vision.\n\nHe who sees God shall die, say the Scriptures (Judg. xiii. 22); and may\nit not be that the eternal vision of God is an eternal death, a swooning\naway of the personality? But St. Teresa, in her description of the last\nstate of prayer, the rapture, transport, flight, or ecstasy of the soul,\ntells us that the soul is borne as upon a cloud or a mighty eagle, \"but\nyou see yourself carried away and know not whither,\" and it is \"with\ndelight,\" and \"if you do not resist, the senses are not lost, at least I\nwas so much myself as to be able to perceive that I was being lifted up\n\"--that is to say, without losing consciousness. And God \"appears to be\nnot content with thus attracting the soul to Himself in so real a way,\nbut wishes to have the body also, though it be mortal and of earth so\nfoul.\" \"Ofttimes the soul is absorbed--or, to speak more correctly, the\nLord absorbs it in Himself; and when He has held it thus for a moment,\nthe will alone remains in union with Him\"--not the intelligence alone.\nWe see, therefore, that it is not so much vision as a union of the will,\nand meanwhile, \"the understanding and memory are distraught ... like one\nwho has slept long and dreamed and is hardly yet awake.\" It is \"a soft\nflight, a delicious flight, a noiseless flight.\" And in this delicious\nflight the consciousness of self is preserved, the awareness of\ndistinction from God with whom one is united. And one is raised to this\nrapture, according to the Spanish mystic, by the contemplation of the\nHumanity of Christ--that is to say, of something concrete and human; it\nis the vision of the living God, not of the idea of God. And in the 28th\nchapter she tells us that \"though there were nothing else to delight the\nsight in heaven but the great beauty of the glorified bodies, that would\nbe an excessive bliss, particularly the vision of the Humanity of Jesus\nChrist our Lord....\" \"This vision,\" she continues, \"though imaginary, I\ndid never see with my bodily eyes, nor, indeed, any other, but only with\nthe eyes of the soul.\" And thus it is that in heaven the soul does not\nsee God only, but everything in God, or rather it sees that everything\nis God, for God embraces all things. And this idea is further emphasized\nby Jacob B\u00f6hme. The saint tells us in the _Moradas Setimas_ (vii. 2)\nthat \"this secret union takes place in the innermost centre of the soul,\nwhere God Himself must dwell.\" And she goes on to say that \"the soul, I\nmean the spirit of the soul, is made one with God ...\"; and this union\nmay be likened to \"two wax candles, the tips of which touch each other\nso closely that there is but one light; or again, the wick, the wax,\nand the light become one, but the one candle can again be separated from\nthe other, and the two candles remain distinct; or the wick may be\nwithdrawn from the wax.\" But there is another more intimate union, and\nthis is \"like rain falling from heaven into a river or stream, becoming\none and the same liquid, so that the river and the rain-water cannot be\ndivided; or it resembles a streamlet flowing into the sea, which cannot\nafterwards be disunited from it; or it may be likened to a room into\nwhich a bright light enters through two windows--though divided when it\nenters, the light becomes one and the same.\" And what difference is\nthere between this and the internal and mystical silence of Miguel de\nMolinos, the third and most perfect degree of which is the silence of\nthought? (_Gu\u00eda Espiritual_, book i., chap. xvii., \u00a7 128). Do we not\nhere very closely approach the view that \"nothingness is the way to\nattain to that high state of a mind reformed\"? (book iii., chap. xx., \u00a7\n196). And what marvel is it that Amiel in his _Journal Intime_ should\ntwice have made use of the Spanish word _nada_, nothing, doubtless\nbecause he found none more expressive in any other language? And\nnevertheless, if we read our mystical doctor, St. Teresa, with care, we\nshall see that the sensitive element is never excluded, the element of\ndelight--that is to say, the element of personal consciousness. The soul\nallows itself to be absorbed in God in order that it may absorb Him, in\norder that it may acquire consciousness of its own divinity.\n\nA beatific vision, a loving contemplation in which the soul is absorbed\nin God and, as it were, lost in Him, appears either as an annihilation\nof self or as a prolonged tedium to our natural way of feeling. And\nhence a certain feeling which we not infrequently observe and which has\nmore than once expressed itself in satires, not altogether free from\nirreverence or perhaps impiety, with reference to the heaven of eternal\nglory as a place of eternal boredom. And it is useless to despise\nfeelings such as these, so wholly natural and spontaneous.\n\nIt is clear that those who feel thus have failed to take note of the\nfact that man's highest pleasure consists in acquiring and intensifying\nconsciousness. Not the pleasure of knowing, exactly, but rather that of\nlearning. In knowing a thing we tend to forget it, to convert it, if the\nexpression may be allowed, into unconscious knowledge. Man's pleasure,\nhis purest delight, is allied with the act of learning, of getting at\nthe truth of things, of acquiring knowledge with differentiation. And\nhence the famous saying of Lessing which I have already quoted. There is\na story told of an ancient Spaniard who accompanied Vasco N\u00fa\u00f1ez de\nBalboa when he climbed that peak in Darien from which both the Atlantic\nand the Pacific are visible. On beholding the two oceans the old man\nfell on his knees and exclaimed, \"I thank Thee, God, that Thou didst not\nlet me die without having seen so great a wonder.\" But if this man had\nstayed there, very soon the wonder would have ceased to be wonderful,\nand with the wonder the pleasure, too, would have vanished. His joy was\nthe joy of discovery. And perhaps the joy of the beatific vision may be\nnot exactly that of the contemplation of the supreme Truth, whole and\nentire (for this the soul could not endure), but rather that of a\ncontinual discovery of the Truth, of a ceaseless act of learning\ninvolving an effort which keeps the sense of personal consciousness\ncontinually active.\n\nIt is difficult for us to conceive a beatific vision of mental quiet, of\nfull knowledge and not of gradual apprehension, as in any way different\nfrom a kind of Nirvana, a spiritual diffusion, a dissipation of energy\nin the essence of God, a return to unconsciousness induced by the\nabsence of shock, of difference--in a word, of activity.\n\nMay it not be that the very condition which makes our eternal union with\nGod thinkable destroys our longing? What difference is there between\nbeing absorbed by God and absorbing Him in ourself? Is it the stream\nthat is lost in the sea or the sea that is lost in the stream? It is all\nthe same.\n\nOur fundamental feeling is our longing not to lose the sense of the\ncontinuity of our consciousness, not to break the concatenation of our\nmemories, the feeling of our own personal concrete identity, even though\nwe may be gradually being absorbed in God, enriching Him. Who at eighty\nyears of age remembers the child that he was at eight, conscious though\nhe may be of the unbroken chain connecting the two? And it may be said\nthat the problem for feeling resolves itself into the question as to\nwhether there is a God, whether there is a human finality to the\nUniverse. But what is finality? For just as it is always possible to ask\nthe why of every why, so it is also always possible to ask the wherefore\nof every wherefore. Supposing that there is a God, then wherefore God?\nFor Himself, it will be said. And someone is sure to reply: What is the\ndifference between this consciousness and no-consciousness? But it will\nalways be true, as Plotinus has said (_Enn_., ii., ix., 8), that to ask\nwhy God made the world is the same as to ask why there is a soul. Or\nrather, not why, but wherefore (_dia ti_).\n\nFor him who places himself outside himself, in an objective hypothetical\nposition--which is as much as to say in an inhuman position--the\nultimate wherefore is as inaccessible--and strictly, as absurd--as the\nultimate why. What difference in effect does it make if there is not any\nfinality? What logical contradiction is involved in the Universe not\nbeing destined to any finality, either human or superhuman? What\nobjection is there in reason to there being no other purpose in the sum\nof things save only to exist and happen as it does exist and happen? For\nhim who places himself outside himself, none; but for him who lives and\nsuffers and desires within himself--for him it is a question of life or\ndeath. Seek, therefore, thyself! But in finding oneself, does not one\nfind one's own nothingness? \"Having become a sinner in seeking himself,\nman has become wretched in finding himself,\" said Bossuet (_Trait\u00e9 de la\nConcupiscence_, chap. xi.). \"Seek thyself\" begins with \"Know thyself.\"\nTo which Carlyle answers (_Past and Present_, book iii., chap. xi.):\n\"The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. 'Know\nthyself': long enough has that poor 'self' of thine tormented thee; thou\nwilt never get to 'know' it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this\nof knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou\ncanst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules. That will be thy better\nplan.\"\n\nYes, but what I work at, will not that too be lost in the end? And if it\nbe lost, wherefore should I work at it? Yes, yes, it may be that to\naccomplish my work--and what is my work?--without thinking about myself,\nis to love God. And what is it to love God?\n\nAnd on the other hand, in loving God in myself, am I not loving myself\nmore than God, am I not loving myself in God?\n\nWhat we really long for after death is to go on living this life, this\nsame mortal life, but without its ills, without its tedium, and without\ndeath. Seneca, the Spaniard, gave expression to this in his _Consolatio\nad Marciam_ (xxvi.); what he desired was to live this life again: _ista\nmoliri_. And what Job asked for (xix. 25-7) was to see God in the flesh,\nnot in the spirit. And what but that is the meaning of that comic\nconception of _eternal recurrence_ which issued from the tragic soul of\npoor Nietzsche, hungering for concrete and temporal immortality?\n\nAnd this beatific vision which is the primary Catholic solution of the\nproblem, how can it be realized, I ask again, without obliteration of\nthe consciousness of self? Will it not be like a sleep in which we\ndream without knowing what we dream? Who would wish for an eternal life\nlike that? To think without knowing that we think is not to be sensible\nof ourselves, it is not to be ourselves. And is not eternal life perhaps\neternal consciousness, not only seeing God, but seeing that we see Him,\nseeing ourselves at the same time and ourselves as distinct from Him? He\nwho sleeps lives, but he has no consciousness of himself; and would\nanyone wish for an eternal sleep? When Circe advised Ulysses to descend\nto the abode of the dead in order to consult the soothsayer Teiresias,\nshe told him that Teiresias alone among the shades of the dead was\npossessed of understanding, for all the others flitted about like\nshadows (_Odyssey_, x., 487-495). And can it be said that the others,\napart from Teiresias, had really overcome death? Is it to overcome death\nto flit about like shadows without understanding?\n\nAnd on the other hand, may we not imagine that possibly this earthly\nlife of ours is to the other life what sleep is to waking? May not all\nour life be a dream and death an awakening? But an awakening to what?\nAnd supposing that everything is but the dream of God and that God one\nday will awaken? Will He remember His dream?\n\nAristotle, the rationalist, tells in his _Ethics_ of the superior\nhappiness of the contemplative life, _bios the\u00f4r\u00eatikos_; and all\nrationalists are wont to place happiness in knowledge. And the\nconception of eternal happiness, of the enjoyment of God, as a beatific\nvision, as knowledge and comprehension of God, is a thing of rationalist\norigin, it is the kind of happiness that corresponds with the God-Idea\nof Aristotelianism. But the truth is that, in addition to vision,\nhappiness demands delight, and this is a thing which has very little to\ndo, with rationalism and is only attainable when we feel ourselves\ndistinct from God.\n\nOur Aristotelian Catholic theologian, the author of the endeavour to\nrationalize Catholic feeling, St. Thomas Aquinas, tells us in his\n_Summa_ (_prima secund\u00e6 partis, qu\u00e6stio_ iv., _art_. i) that \"delight is\nrequisite for happiness. For delight is caused by the fact of desire\nresting in attained good. Hence, since happiness is nothing but the\nattainment of the Sovereign Good, there cannot be happiness without\nconcomitant delight.\" But where is the delight of him who rests? To\nrest, _requiescere_--is not that to sleep and not to possess even the\nconsciousness that one is resting? \"Delight is caused by the vision of\nGod itself,\" the theologian continues. But does the soul feel itself\ndistinct from God? \"The delight that accompanies the activity of the\nunderstanding does not impede, but rather strengthens that activity,\" he\nsays later on. Obviously! for what happiness were it else? And in order\nto save delectation, delight, pleasure, which, like pain, has always\nsomething material in it, and which we conceive of only as existing in a\nsoul incarnate in a body, it was necessary to suppose that the soul in a\nstate of blessedness is united with its body. Apart from some kind of\nbody, how is delight possible? The immortality of the pure soul, without\nsome sort of body or spirit-covering, is not true immortality. And at\nbottom, what we long for is a prolongation of this life, this life and\nno other, this life of flesh and suffering, this life which we imprecate\nat times simply because it comes to an end. The majority of suicides\nwould not take their lives if they had the assurance that they would\nnever die on this earth. The self-slayer kills himself because he will\nnot wait for death.\n\nWhen in the thirty-third canto of the _Paradiso_, Dante relates how he\nattained to the vision of God, he tells us that just as a man who\nbeholds somewhat in his sleep retains on awakening nothing but the\nimpression of the feeling in his mind, so it was with him, for when the\nvision had all but passed away the sweetness that sprang from it still\ndistilled itself in his heart.\n\n    _Cotal son to, che quasi tutta cessa\n    mia visione ed ancor mi distilla\n    nel cuor lo dulce che nacque da essa_\n\nlike snow that melts in the sun--\n\n    _cosi la neve al sol si disigilla_.\n\nThat is to say, that the vision, the intellectual content, passes, and\nthat which remains is the delight, the _passione impressa_, the\nemotional, the irrational--in a word, the corporeal.\n\nWhat we desire is not merely spiritual felicity, not merely vision, but\ndelight, bodily happiness. The other happiness, the rationalist\n_beatitude_, the happiness of being submerged in understanding, can\nonly--I will not say satisfy or deceive, for I do not believe that it\never satisfied or deceived even a Spinoza. At the conclusion of his\n_Ethic_, in propositions xxxv. and xxxvi. of the fifth part, Spinoza,\naffirms that God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual love; that\nthe intellectual love of the mind towards God is the selfsame love with\nwhich God loves Himself, not in so far as He is infinite, but in so far\nas He can be manifested through the essence of the human mind,\nconsidered under the form of eternity--that is to say, that the\nintellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love\nwith which God loves Himself. And after these tragic, these desolating\npropositions, we are told in the last proposition of the whole book,\nthat which closes and crowns this tremendous tragedy of the _Ethic_,\nthat happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself, and that\nour repression of our desires is not the cause of our enjoyment of\nvirtue, but rather because we find enjoyment in virtue we are able to\nrepress our desires. Intellectual love! intellectual love! what is this\nintellectual love? Something of the nature of a red flavour, or a bitter\nsound, or an aromatic colour, or rather something of the same sort as a\nlove-stricken triangle or an enraged ellipse--a pure metaphor, but a\ntragic metaphor. And a metaphor corresponding tragically with that\nsaying that the heart also has its reasons. Reasons of the heart! loves\nof the head! intellectual delight! delicious intellection!--tragedy,\ntragedy, tragedy!\n\nAnd nevertheless there is something which may be called intellectual\nlove, and that is the love of understanding, that which Aristotle meant\nby the contemplative life, for there is something of action and of love\nin the act of understanding, and the beatific vision is the vision of\nthe total truth. Is there not perhaps at the root of every passion\nsomething of curiosity? Did not our first parents, according to the\nBiblical story, fall because of their eagerness to taste of the fruit of\nthe tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to be as gods, knowers\nof this knowledge? The vision of God--that is to say, the vision of the\nUniverse itself, in its soul, in its inmost essence--would not that\nappease all our longing? And this vision can fail to satisfy only men of\na gross mind who do not perceive that the greatest joy of man is to be\nmore man--that is, more God--and that man is more God the more\nconsciousness he has.\n\nAnd this intellectual love, which is nothing but the so-called platonic\nlove, is a means to dominion and possession. There is, in fact, no more\nperfect dominion than knowledge; he who knows something, possesses it.\nKnowledge unites the knower with the known. \"I contemplate thee and in\ncontemplating thee I make thee mine\"--such is the formula. And to know\nGod, what can that be but to possess Him? He who knows God is thereby\nhimself God.\n\nIn _La D\u00e9gradation de l'\u00e9nergie_ (iv^e partie, chap. xviii., 2) B.\nBrunhes relates a story concerning the great Catholic mathematician\nCauchy, communicated to him by M. Sarrau, who had it from P\u00e8re Gratry.\nWhile Cauchy and P\u00e8re Gratry were walking in the gardens of the\nLuxumbourg, their conversation turned upon the happiness which those in\nheaven would have in knowing at last, without any obscurity or\nlimitation, the truths which they had so long and so laboriously sought\nto investigate on earth. In allusion to the study which Cauchy had made\nof the mechanistic theory of the reflection of light, P\u00e8re Gratry threw\nout the suggestion that one on the greatest intellectual joys of the\ngreat geometrician in the future life would be to penetrate into the\nsecret of light. To which Cauchy replied that it did not appear to him\nto be possible to know more about this than he himself already knew,\nneither could he conceive how the most perfect intelligence could arrive\nat a clearer comprehension of the mystery of reflection than that\nmanifested in his own explanation of it, seeing that he had furnished a\nmechanistic theory of the phenomenon. \"His piety,\" Brunhes adds, \"did\nnot extend to a belief that God Himself could have created anything\ndifferent or anything better.\"\n\nFrom this narrative two points of interest emerge. The first is the idea\nexpressed in it as to what contemplation, intellectual love, or beatific\nvision, may mean for men of a superior order of intelligence, men whose\nruling passion is knowledge; and the second is the implicit faith shown\nin the mechanistic explanation of the world.\n\nThis mechanistic tendency of the intellect coheres with the well-known\nformula, \"Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is\ntransformed\"--a formula by means of which it has been sought to\ninterpret the ambiguous principle of the conservation of energy,\nforgetting that practically, for us, for men, energy is utilizable\nenergy, and that this is continually being lost, dissipated by the\ndiffusion of heat, and degraded, its tendency being to arrive at a\ndead-level and homogeneity. That which has value, and more than value,\nreality, for us, is the differential, which is the qualitative; pure,\nundifferentiated quantity is for us as if it did not exist, for it does\nnot act. And the material Universe, the body of the Universe, would\nappear to be gradually proceeding--unaffected by the retarding action of\nliving organisms or even by the conscious action of man--towards a state\nof perfect stability, of homogeneity (_vide_ Brunhes, _op. cit._) For,\nwhile spirit tends towards concentration, material energy tends towards\ndiffusion.\n\nAnd may not this have an intimate relation with our problem? May there\nnot be a connection between this conclusion of scientific philosophy\nwith respect to a final state of stability and homogeneity and the\nmystical dream of the apocatastasis? May not this death of the body of\nthe Universe be the final triumph of its spirit, of God?\n\nIt is manifest that there is an intimate relation between the religious\nneed of an eternal life after death and the conclusions--always\nprovisional--at which scientific philosophy arrives with respect to the\nprobable future of the material or sensible Universe. And the fact is\nthat just as there are theologians of God and the immortality of the\nsoul, so there are also those whom Brunhes calls (_op. cit._, chap.\nxxvi., \u00a7 2) theologians of monism, and whom it would perhaps be better\nto call atheologians, people who pertinaciously adhere to the spirit of\n_a priori_ affirmation; and this becomes intolerable, Brunhes adds, when\nthey harbour the pretension of despising theology. A notable type of\nthese gentlemen may be found in Haeckel, who has succeeded in solving\nthe riddles of Nature!\n\nThese atheologians have seized upon the principle of the conservation of\nenergy, the \"Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is\ntransformed\" formula, the theological origin of which is seen in\nDescartes, and have made use of it as a means whereby we are able to\ndispense with God. \"The world built to last,\" Brunhes comments,\n\"resisting all wear and tear, or rather automatically repairing the\nrents that appear in it--what a splendid theme for oratorical\namplification! But these same amplifications which served in the\nseventeenth century to prove the wisdom of the Creator have been used in\nour days as arguments for those who presume to do without Him.\" It is\nthe old story: so-called scientific philosophy, the origin and\ninspiration of which is fundamentally theological or religious, ending\nin an atheology or irreligion, which is itself nothing else but theology\nand religion. Let us call to mind the comments of Ritschl upon this\nhead, already quoted in this work.\n\nTo-day the last word of science, or rather of scientific philosophy,\nappears to be that, by virtue of the degradation of energy, of the\npredominance of irreversible phenomena, the material, sensible world is\ntravelling towards a condition of ultimate levelness, a kind of final\nhomogeneity. And this brings to our mind the hypothesis, not only so\nmuch used but abused by Spencer, of a primordial homogeneity, and his\nfantastic theory of the instability of the homogeneous. An instability\nthat required the atheological agnosticism of Spencer in order to\nexplain the inexplicable transition from the homogeneous to the\nheterogeneous. For how, without any action from without, can any\nheterogeneity emerge from perfect and absolute homogeneity? But as it\nwas necessary to get rid of every kind of creation, \"the unemployed\nengineer turned metaphysician,\" as Papini called him, invented the\ntheory of the instability of the homogeneous, which is more ... what\nshall I say? more mystical, and even more mythological if you like, than\nthe creative action of God.\n\nThe Italian positivist, Roberto Ardigo, was nearer the mark when,\nobjecting to Spencer's theory, he said that the most natural supposition\nwas that things always were as they are now, that always there have been\nworlds in process of formation, in the nebulous stage, worlds\ncompletely formed and worlds in process of dissolution; that\nheterogeneity, in short, is eternal. Another way, it will be seen, of\nnot solving the riddle.\n\nIs this perhaps the solution? But in that case the Universe would be\ninfinite, and in reality we are unable to conceive a Universe that is\nboth eternal and limited such as that which served as the basis of\nNietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. If the Universe must be\neternal, if within it and as regards each of its component worlds,\nperiods in which the movement is towards homogeneity, towards the\ndegradation of energy, must alternate with other periods in which the\nmovement is towards heterogeneity, then it is necessary that the\nUniverse should be infinite, that there should be scope, always and in\neach world, for some action coming from without. And, in fact, the body\nof God cannot be other than eternal and infinite.\n\nBut as far as our own world is concerned, its gradual\nlevelling-down--or, we might say, its death--appears to be proved. And\nhow will this process affect the fate of our spirit? Will it wane with\nthe degradation of the energy of our world and return to\nunconsciousness, or will it rather grow according as the utilizable\nenergy diminishes and by virtue of the very efforts that it makes to\nretard this degradation and to dominate Nature?--for this it is that\nconstitutes the life of the spirit. May it be that consciousness and its\nextended support are two powers in contraposition, the one growing at\nthe expense of the other?\n\nThe fact is that the best of our scientific work, the best of our\nindustry (that part of it I mean--and it is a large part--that does not\ntend to destruction), is directed towards retarding this fatal process\nof the degradation of energy. And organic life, the support of our\nconsciousness, is itself an effort to avoid, so far as it is possible,\nthis fatal period, to postpone it.\n\nIt is useless to seek to deceive ourselves with pagan p\u00e6ans in praise\nof Nature, for as Leopardi, that Christian atheist, said with profound\ntruth in his stupendous poem _La Ginestra_, Nature \"gives us life like a\nmother, but loves us like a step-mother.\" The origin of human\ncompanionship was opposition to Nature; it was horror of impious Nature\nthat first linked men together in the bonds of society. It is human\nsociety, in effect, the source of reflective consciousness and of the\ncraving for immortality, that inaugurates the state of grace upon the\nstate of Nature; and it is man who, by humanizing and spiritualizing\nNature by his industry, supernaturalizes her.\n\nIn two amazing sonnets which he called _Redemption_, the tragic\nPortuguese poet, Antero de Quental, embodied his dream of a spirit\nimprisoned, not in atoms or ions or crystals, but--as is natural in a\npoet--in the sea, in trees, in the forest, in the mountains, in the\nwind, in all material individualities and forms; and he imagines that a\nday may come when all these captive souls, as yet in the limbo of\nexistence, will awaken to consciousness, and, emerging as pure thought\nfrom the forms that imprisoned them, they will see these forms, the\ncreatures of illusion, fall away and dissolve like a baseless vision. It\nis a magnificent dream of the penetration of everything by\nconsciousness.\n\nMay it not be that the Universe, our Universe--who knows if there are\nothers?--began with a zero of spirit--and zero is not the same as\nnothing--and an infinite of matter, and that its goal is to end with an\ninfinite of spirit and a zero of matter? Dreams!\n\nMay it be that everything has a soul and that this soul begs to be\nfreed?\n\n    _Oh tierras de Alvargonz\u00e1lez,\n    en el coraz\u00f3n de Espa\u00f1a,\n    tierras pobres, tierras tristes,\n    tan tristes que tienen alma!_\n\nsings our poet Antonio Machado in his _Campos de Castilla_.[50] Is the\nsadness of the field in the fields themselves or in us who look upon\nthem? Do they not suffer? But what can an individual soul in a world of\nmatter actually be? Is it the rock or the mountain that is the\nindividual? Is it the tree?\n\nAnd nevertheless the fact always remains that spirit and matter are at\nstrife. This is the thought that Espronceda expressed when he wrote:\n\n    _Aqu\u00ed, para vivir en santa calma,\n    o sobra la materia, o sobra el alma._[51]\n\nAnd is there not in the history of thought, or of human imagination if\nyou prefer it, something that corresponds to this process of the\nreduction of matter, in the sense of a reduction of everything to\nconsciousness?\n\nYes, there is, and its author is the first Christian mystic, St. Paul of\nTarsus, the Apostle of the Gentiles, he who because he had never with\nhis bodily eyes looked upon the face of the fleshly and mortal Christ,\nthe ethical Christ, created within himself an immortal and religious\nChrist--he who was caught up into the third heaven and there beheld\nsecret and unspeakable things (2 Cor. xii.). And this first Christian\nmystic dreamed also of a final triumph of spirit, of consciousness, and\nthis is what in theology is technically called the apocatastasis or\nrestitution.\n\nIn 1 Cor. xv. 26-28 he tells us that \"the last enemy that shall be\ndestroyed is death, for he hath put all things under his feet. But when\nhe saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is\nexcepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall\nbe subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto\nhim that put all things under him, that God may be all in all\": _hina h\u00ea\nho theos panta en pasin_--that is to say, that the end is that God,\nConsciousness, will end by being all in all.\n\nThis doctrine is completed by Paul's teaching, in his Epistle to the\nEphesians, with regard to the end of the whole history of the world. In\nthis Epistle, as you know, he represents Christ--by whom \"were all\nthings created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and\ninvisible\" (Col. i. 16)--as the head over all things (Eph. i. 22), and\nin him, in this head, we all shall be raised up that we may live in the\ncommunion of saints and that we \"may be able to comprehend with all\nsaints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to\nknow the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge\" (Eph. iii. 18, 19).\nAnd this gathering of us together in Christ, who is the head and, as it\nwere, the compendium, of Humanity, is what the Apostle calls the\ngathering or collecting together or recapitulating of all things in\nChrist, _anakephalai\u00f4sthai ta panta en Christ\u00f4_. And this\nrecapitulation--_anakephalai\u00f4sis_, anacefaleosis--the end of the world's\nhistory and of the human race, is merely another aspect of the\napocatastasis. The apocatastasis, God's coming to be all in all, thus\nresolves itself into the anacefaleosis, the gathering together of all\nthings in Christ, in Humanity--Humanity therefore being the end of\ncreation. And does not this apocatastasis, this humanization or\ndivinization of all things, do away with matter? But if matter, which is\nthe principle of individuation, the scholastic _principium\nindividuationis_, is once done away with, does not everything return to\npure consciousness, which, in its pure purity, neither knows itself nor\nis it anything that can be conceived or felt? And if matter be\nabolished, what support is there left for spirit?\n\nThus a different train of thought leads us to the same difficulties, the\nsame unthinkabilities.\n\nIt may be said, on the other hand, that the apocatastasis, God's coming\nto be all in all, presupposes that there was a time when He was not all\nin all. The supposition that all beings shall attain to the enjoyment of\nGod implies the supposition that God shall attain to the enjoyment of\nall beings, for the beatific vision is mutual, and God is perfected in\nbeing better known, and His being is nourished and enriched with souls.\n\nFollowing up the track of these wild dreams, we might imagine an\nunconscious God, slumbering in matter, and gradually wakening into\nconsciousness of everything, consciousness of His own divinity; we might\nimagine the whole Universe becoming conscious of itself as a whole and\nbecoming conscious of each of its constituent consciousnesses, becoming\nGod. But in that case, how did this unconscious God begin? Is He not\nmatter itself? God would thus be not the beginning but the end of the\nUniverse; but can that be the end which was not the beginning? Or can it\nbe that outside time, in eternity, there is a difference between\nbeginning and end? \"The soul of all things cannot be bound by that very\nthing--that is, matter--which it itself has bound,\" says Plotinus\n(_Enn._ ii., ix. 7). Or is it not rather the Consciousness of the Whole\nthat strives to become the consciousness of each part and to make each\npartial consciousness conscious of itself--that is, of the total\nconsciousness? Is not this universal soul a monotheist or solitary God\nwho is in process of becoming a pantheist God? And if it is not so, if\nmatter and pain are alien to God, wherefore, it will be asked, did God\ncreate the world? For what purpose did He make matter and introduce\npain? Would it not have been better if He had not made anything? What\nadded glory does He gain by the creation of angels or of men whose fall\nHe must punish with eternal torment? Did He perhaps create evil for the\nsake of remedying it? Or was redemption His design, redemption complete\nand absolute, redemption of all things and of all men? For this\nhypothesis is neither more rational nor more pious than the other.\n\nIn so far as we attempt to represent eternal happiness to ourselves, we\nare confronted by a series of questions to which there is no\nsatisfactory--that is, rational--answer, and it matters not whether the\nsupposition from which we start be monotheist, or pantheist, or even\npanentheist.\n\nLet us return to the Pauline apocatastasis.\n\nIs it not possible that in becoming all in all God completes Himself,\nbecomes at last fully God, an infinite consciousness embracing all\nconsciousnesses? And what is an infinite consciousness? Since\nconsciousness supposes limitation, or rather since consciousness is\nconsciousness of limitation, of distinction, does it not thereby exclude\ninfinitude? What value has the notion of infinitude applied to\nconsciousness? What is a consciousness that is all consciousness,\nwithout anything outside it that is not consciousness? In such a case,\nof what is consciousness the consciousness? Of its content? Or may it\nnot rather be that, starting from chaos, from absolute unconsciousness,\nin the eternity of the past, we continually approach the apocatastasis\nor final apotheosis without ever reaching it?\n\nMay not this apocatastasis, this return of all things to God, be rather\nan ideal term to which we unceasingly approach--some of us with fleeter\nstep than others--but which we are destined never to reach? May not the\nabsolute and perfect eternal happiness be an eternal hope, which would\ndie if it were to be realized? Is it possible to be happy without hope?\nAnd there is no place for hope when once possession has been realized,\nfor hope, desire, is killed by possession. May it not be, I say, that\nall souls grow without ceasing, some in a greater measure than others,\nbut all having to pass some time through the same degree of growth,\nwhatever that degree may be, and yet without ever arriving at the\ninfinite, at God, to whom they continually approach? Is not eternal\nhappiness an eternal hope, with its eternal nucleus of sorrow in order\nthat happiness shall not be swallowed up in nothingness?\n\nFollow more questions to which there is no answer. \"He shall be all in\nall,\" says the Apostle. But will His mode of being in each one be\ndifferent or will it be the same for all alike? Will not God be wholly\nin one of the damned? Is He not in his soul? Is He not in what is called\nhell? And in what sense is He in hell?\n\nWhence arise new problems, those relating to the opposition between\nheaven and hell, between eternal happiness and eternal unhappiness.\n\nMay it not be that in the end all shall be saved, including Cain and\nJudas and Satan himself, as Origen's development of the Pauline\napocatastasis led him to hope?\n\nWhen our Catholic theologians seek to justify rationally--or in other\nwords, ethically--the dogma of the eternity of the pains of hell, they\nput forward reasons so specious, ridiculous, and childish, that it would\nappear impossible that they should ever have obtained currency. For to\nassert that since God is infinite, an offence committed against Him is\ninfinite also and therefore demands an eternal punishment, is, apart\nfrom the inconceivability of an infinite offence, to be unaware that, in\nhuman ethics, if not in the human police system, the gravity of the\noffence is measured not by the dignity of the injured person but by the\nintention of the injurer, and that to speak of an infinite culpable\nintention is sheer nonsense, and nothing else. In this connection those\nwords which Christ addressed to His Father are capable of application:\n\"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,\" and no man who\ncommits an offence against God or his neighbour knows what he does. In\nhuman ethics, or if you like in human police regulations--that which is\ncalled penal law and is anything but law[52] eternal punishment is a\nmeaningless phrase.\n\n\"God is just and punishes us; that is all we need to know; as far as we\nare concerned the rest is merely curiosity.\" Such was the conclusion of\nLamennais (_Essai_, etc., iv^e partie, chap, vii.), an opinion shared by\nmany others. Calvin also held the same view. But is there anyone who is\ncontent with this? Pure curiosity!--to call this load that wellnigh\ncrushes our heart pure curiosity!\n\nMay we not say, perhaps, that the evil man is annihilated because he\nwished to be annihilated, or that he did not wish strongly enough to\neternalize himself because he was evil? May we not say that it is not\nbelieving in the other life that makes a man good, but rather that being\ngood makes him believe in it? And what is being good and being evil?\nThese states pertain to the sphere of ethics, not of religion: or,\nrather, does not the doing good though being evil pertain to ethics, and\nthe being good though doing evil to religion?\n\nShall we not perhaps be told, on the other hand, that if the sinner\nsuffers an eternal punishment, it is because he does not cease to\nsin?--for the damned sin without ceasing. This, however, is no solution\nof the problem, which derives all its absurdity from the fact that\npunishment has been conceived as vindictiveness or vengeance, not as\ncorrection, has been conceived after the fashion of barbarous peoples.\nAnd in the same way hell has been conceived as a sort of police\ninstitution, necessary in order to put fear into the world. And the\nworst of it is that it no longer intimidates, and therefore will have to\nbe shut up.\n\nBut, on the other hand, as a religious conception and veiled in mystery,\nwhy not--although the idea revolts our feelings--an eternity of\nsuffering? why not a God who is nourished by our suffering? Is our\nhappiness the end of the Universe? or may we possibly sustain with our\nsuffering some alien happiness? Let us read again in the _Eumenides_ of\nthat terrible tragedian, \u00c6schylus, those choruses of the Furies in\nwhich they curse the new gods for overturning the ancient laws and\nsnatching Orestes from their hands--impassioned invectives against the\nApollinian redemption. Does not redemption tear man, their captive and\nplaything, from the hands of the gods, who delight and amuse themselves\nin his sufferings, like children, as the tragic poet says, torturing\nbeetles? And let us remember the cry, \"My God, my God, why hast thou\nforsaken me?\"\n\nYes, why not an eternity of suffering? Hell is an eternalization of the\nsoul, even though it be an eternity of pain. Is not pain essential to\nlife?\n\nMen go on inventing theories to explain what they call the origin of\nevil. And why not the origin of good? Why suppose that it is good that\nis positive and original, and evil that is negative and derivatory?\n\"Everything that is, in so far as it is, is good,\" St. Augustine\naffirmed. But why? What does \"being good\" mean? Good is good for\nsomething, conducive to an end, and to say that everything is good is\nequivalent to saying that everything is making for its end. But what is\nits end? Our desire is to eternalize ourselves, to persist, and we call\ngood everything that conspires to this end and bad everything that tends\nto lessen or destroy our consciousness. We suppose that human\nconsciousness is an end and not a means to something else which may not\nbe consciousness, whether human or superhuman.\n\nAll metaphysical optimism, such as that of Leibnitz, and all\nmetaphysical pessimism, such as that of Schopenhauer, have no other\nfoundation than this. For Leibnitz this world is the best because it\nconspires to perpetuate consciousness, and, together with consciousness,\nwill, because intelligence increases will and perfects it, because the\nend of man is the contemplation of God; while for Schopenhauer this\nworld is the worst of all possible worlds, because it conspires to\ndestroy will, because intelligence, representation, nullifies the will\nthat begot it.\n\nAnd similarly Franklin, who believed in another life, asserted that he\nwas willing to live this life over again, the life that he had actually\nlived, \"from its beginning to the end\"; while Leopardi, who did not\nbelieve in another life, asserted that nobody would consent to live his\nlife over again. These two views of life are not merely ethical, but\nreligious; and the feeling of moral good, in so far as it is a\nteleological value, is of religious origin also.\n\nAnd to return to our interrogations: Shall not all be saved, shall not\nall be made eternal, and eternal not in suffering but in happiness,\nthose whom we call good and those whom we call bad alike?\n\nAnd as regards this question of good and evil, does not the malice of\nhim who judges enter in? Is the badness in the intention of him who does\nthe deed or is it not rather in that of him who judges it to be bad? But\nthe terrible thing is that man judges himself, creates himself his own\njudge.\n\nWho then shall be saved? And now the imagination puts forth another\npossibility--neither more nor less rational than all those which have\njust been put forward interrogatively--and that is that only those are\nsaved who have longed to be saved, that only those are eternalized who\nhave lived in an agony of hunger for eternity and for eternalization. He\nwho desires never to die and believes that he shall never die in the\nspirit, desires it because he deserves it, or rather, only he desires\npersonal immortality who carries his immortality within him. The man who\ndoes not long passionately, and with a passion that triumphs over all\nthe dictates of reason, for his own immortality, is the man who does not\ndeserve it, and because he does not deserve it he does not long for it.\nAnd it is no injustice not to give a man that which he does not know how\nto desire, for \"ask, and it shall be given you.\" It may be that to each\nwill be given that which he desired. And perhaps the sin against the\nHoly Ghost--for which, according to the Evangelist, there is no\nremission--is none other than that of not desiring God, not longing to\nbe made eternal.\n\n    As is your sort of mind\n    So is your sort of search; you'll find\n    What you desire, and that's to be\n    A Christian,\n\nsaid Robert Browning in _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_.\n\nIn his _Inferno_ Dante condemned the Epicureans, those who did not\nbelieve in another life, to something more terrible than the not having\nit, and that is the consciousness of not having it, and this he\nexpressed in plastic form by picturing them shut up in their tombs for\nall eternity, without light, without air, without fire, without\nmovement, without life (_Inferno_, x., 10-15).\n\nWhat cruelty is there in denying to a man that which he did not or could\nnot desire? In the sixth book of his _\u00c6neid_ (426-429) the gentle Virgil\nmakes us hear the plaintive voices and sobbing of the babes who weep\nupon the threshold of Hades,\n\n    _Continuo \u00e0udit\u00e6 voces, vagitus et ingens,\n    Infantumque anim\u00e6 flentes in limine primo,_\n\nunhappy in that they had but entered upon life and never known the\nsweetness of it, and whom, torn from their mothers' breasts, a dark day\nhad cut off and drowned in bitter death--\n\n    _Quos dulcis vit\u00e6 exsortes et at ubere raptos\n    Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo._\n\nBut what life did they lose, if they neither knew life nor longed for\nit? And yet is it true that they never longed for it?\n\nIt may be said that others craved life on their behalf, that their\nparents longed for them to be eternal to the end that they might be\ngladdened by them in paradise. And so a fresh field is opened up for the\nimagination--namely, the consideration of the solidarity and\nrepresentivity of eternal salvation.\n\nThere are many, indeed, who imagine the human race as one being, a\ncollective and solidary individual, in whom each member may represent or\nmay come to represent the total collectivity; and they imagine salvation\nas something collective. As something collective also, merit, and as\nsomething collective sin, and redemption. According to this mode of\nfeeling and imagining, either all are saved or none is saved; redemption\nis total and it is mutual; each man is his neighbour's Christ.\n\nAnd is there not perhaps a hint of this in the popular Catholic belief\nwith regard to souls in purgatory, the belief that the living may devote\nsuffrages and apply merits to the souls of their dead? This sense of the\ntransmission of merits, both to the living and the dead, is general in\npopular Catholic piety.\n\nNor should it be forgotten that in the history of man's religious\nthought there has often presented itself the idea of an immortality\nrestricted to a certain number of the elect, spirits representative of\nthe rest and in a certain sense including them; an idea of pagan\nderivation--for such were the heroes and demi-gods--which sometimes\nshelters itself behind the pronouncement that there are many that are\ncalled and few that are chosen.\n\nRecently, while I was engaged upon this essay, there came into my hands\nthe third edition of the _Dialogue sur la vie et sur la mort_, by\nCharles Bonnefon, a book in which imaginative conceptions similar to\nthose that I have been setting forth find succinct and suggestive\nexpression. The soul cannot live without the body, Bonnefon says, nor\nthe body without the soul, and thus neither birth nor death has any real\nexistence--strictly speaking, there is no body, no soul, no birth, no\ndeath, all of which are abstractions and appearances, but only a\nthinking life, of which we form part and which can neither be born nor\ndie. Hence he is led to deny human individuality and to assert that no\none can say \"I am\" but only \"we are,\" or, more correctly, \"there is in\nus.\" It is humanity, the species, that thinks and loves in us. And souls\nare transmitted in the same way that bodies are transmitted. \"The living\nthought or the thinking life which we are will find itself again\nimmediately in a form analogous to that which was our origin and\ncorresponding with our being in the womb of a pregnant woman.\" Each of\nus, therefore, has lived before and will live again, although he does\nnot know it. \"If humanity is gradually raised above itself, when the\nlast man dies, the man who will contain all the rest of mankind in\nhimself, who shall say that he may not have arrived at that higher order\nof humanity such as exists elsewhere, in heaven?... As we are all bound\ntogether in solidarity, we shall all, little by little, gather the\nfruits of our travail.\" According to this mode of imagining and\nthinking, since nobody is born, nobody dies, no single soul has finished\nits struggle but many times has been plunged into the midst of the human\nstruggle \"ever since the type of embryo corresponding with the same\nconsciousness was represented in the succession of human phenomena.\" It\nis obvious that since Bonnefon begins by denying personal individuality,\nhe leaves out of account our real longing, which is to save our\nindividuality; but on the other hand, since he, Bonnefon, is a personal\nindividual and feels this longing, he has recourse to the distinction\nbetween the called and the chosen, and to the idea of representative\nspirits, and he concedes to a certain number of men this representative\nindividual immortality. Of these elect he says that \"they will be\nsomewhat more necessary to God than we ourselves.\" And he closes this\nsplendid dream by supposing that \"it is not impossible that we shall\narrive by a series of ascensions at the supreme happiness, and that our\nlife shall be merged in the perfect Life as a drop of water in the sea.\nThen we shall understand,\" he continues, \"that everything was\nnecessary, that every philosophy and every religion had its hour of\ntruth, and that in all our wanderings and errors and in the darkest\nmoments of our history we discerned the light of the distant beacon, and\nthat we were all predestined to participate in the Eternal Light. And if\nthe God whom we shall find again possesses a body--and we cannot\nconceive a living God without a body--we, together with each of the\nmyriads of races that the myriads of suns have brought forth, shall be\nthe conscious cells of his body. If this dream should be fulfilled, an\nocean of love would beat upon our shores and the end of every life would\nbe to add a drop of water to this ocean's infinity.\" And what is this\ncosmic dream of Bonnefon's but the plastic representation of the Pauline\napocatastasis?\n\nYes, this dream, which has its origin far back in the dawn of\nChristianity, is fundamentally the same as the Pauline anacefaleosis,\nthe fusion of all men in Man, in the whole of Humanity embodied in a\nPerson, who is Christ, and the fusion not only of all men but of all\nthings, and the subsequent subjection of all things to God, in order\nthat God, Consciousness, may be all in all. And this supposes a\ncollective redemption and a society beyond the grave.\n\nIn the middle of the eighteenth century, two pietists of Protestant\norigin, Johann Jakob Moser and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, gave a new\nforce and value to the Pauline anacefaleosis. Moser \"declared that his\nreligion consisted not in holding certain doctrines to be true and in\nliving a virtuous life conformably therewith, but in being reunited to\nGod through Christ. But this demands the thorough knowledge--a knowledge\nthat goes on increasing until the end of life--of one's own sins and\nalso of the mercy and patience of God, the transformation of all natural\nfeelings, the appropriation of the atonement wrought by the death of\nChrist, the enjoyment of peace with God in the permanent witness of the\nHoly Spirit to the remission of sins, the ordering of life according to\nthe pattern of Christ, which is the fruit of faith alone, the drawing\nnear to God and the intercourse of the soul with Him, the disposition to\ndie in grace and the joyful expectation of the Judgement which will\nbestow blessedness in the more intimate enjoyment of God and in the\n_commerce with all the saints_\" (Ritschl, _Geschichte des Pietismus_,\nvol. iii., \u00a7 43). The commerce with all the saints--that is to say, the\neternal human society. And for his part, Oetinger considers eternal\nhappiness not as the contemplation of God in His infinitude, but, taking\nthe Epistle to the Ephesians as his authority, as the contemplation of\nGod in the harmony of the creature with Christ. The commerce with all\nthe saints was, according to him, essential to the content of eternal\nhappiness. It was the realization of the kingdom of God, which thus\ncomes to be the kingdom of Man. And in his exposition of these doctrines\nof the two pietists, Ritschl confesses _(op. cit._, iii., \u00a7 46) that\nboth witnesses have with these doctrines contributed something to\nProtestantism that is of like value with the theological method of\nSpener, another pietist.\n\nWe see, therefore, that the Christian, mystical, inward longing ever\nsince St. Paul, has been to give human finality, or divine finality, to\nthe Universe, to save human consciousness, and to save it by converting\nall humanity into a person. This longing is expressed in the\nanacefaleosis, the gathering together of all things, all things in earth\nand in heaven, the visible and the invisible, in Christ, and also in the\napocatastasis, the return of all things to God, to consciousness, in\norder that God may be all in all. And does not God's being all in all\nmean that all things shall acquire consciousness and that in this\nconsciousness everything that has happened will come to life again, and\nthat everything that has existed in time will be eternalized? And within\nthe all, all individual consciousnesses, those which have been, those\nthat are, and those that will be, and as they have been, as they are,\nand as they will be, will exist in a condition of society and\nsolidarity.\n\nBut does not this awakening to consciousness of everything that has\nbeen, necessarily involve a fusion of the identical, an amalgamation of\nlike things? In this conversion of the human race into a true society in\nChrist, a communion of saints, a kingdom of heaven, will not individual\ndifferences, tainted as they are with deceit and even with sin, be\nobliterated, and in the perfect society will that alone remain of each\nman which was the essential part of him? Would it not perhaps result,\naccording to Bonnefon's supposition, that this consciousness that lived\nin the twentieth century in this corner of this earth would feel itself\nto be the same with other such consciousnesses as have lived in other\ncenturies and perhaps in other worlds?\n\nAnd how can we conceive of an effective and real union, a substantial\nand intimate union, soul with soul, of all those who have been?\n\n    If any two creatures grew into one\n    They would do more than the world has done,\n\nsaid Browning in _The Flight of the Duchess_; and Christ has told us\nthat where two or three are gathered together in His name, there is He\nin the midst of them.\n\nHeaven, then, so it is believed by many, is society, a more perfect\nsociety than that of this world; it is human society fused into a\nperson. And there are not wanting some who believe that the tendency of\nall human progress is the conversion of our species into one collective\nbeing with real consciousness--is not perhaps an individual human\norganism a kind of confederation of cells?--and that when it shall have\nacquired full consciousness, all those who have existed will come to\nlife again in it.\n\nHeaven, so many think, is society. Just as no one can live in isolation,\nso no one can survive in isolation. No one can enjoy God in heaven who\nsees his brother suffering in hell, for the sin and the merit were\ncommon to both. We think with the thoughts of others and we feel with\nthe feelings of others. To see God when God shall be all in all is to\nsee all things in God and to live in God with all things.\n\nThis splendid dream of the final solidarity of mankind is the Pauline\nanacefaleosis and apocatastasis. We Christians, said the Apostle (I Cor.\nxii. 27) are the body of Christ, members of Him, flesh of His flesh and\nbone of His bone (Eph. v. 30), branches of the vine.\n\nBut in this final solidarization, in this true and supreme\n_Christination_ of all creatures, what becomes of each individual\nconsciousness? what becomes of Me, of this poor fragile I, this I that\nis the slave of time and space, this I which reason tells me is a mere\npassing accident, but for the saving of which I live and suffer and hope\nand believe? Granting that the human finality of the Universe is saved,\nthat consciousness is saved, would I resign myself to make the sacrifice\nof this poor I, by which and by which alone I know this finality and\nthis consciousness?\n\nAnd here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summit\nof the tragedy, the very heart of it--the sacrifice of our own\nindividual consciousness upon the altar of the perfected Human\nConsciousness, of the Divine Consciousness.\n\nBut is there really a tragedy? If we could attain to a clear vision of\nthis anacefaleosis, if we could succeed in understanding and feeling\nthat we were going to enrich Christ, should we hesitate for a moment in\nsurrendering ourselves utterly to Him? Would the stream that flows into\nthe sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of the\nsalt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish to\nreturn to the cloud which drew its life from the sea? is not its joy to\nfeel itself absorbed?\n\nAnd yet....\n\nYes, in spite of everything, this is the climax of the tragedy.\n\nAnd the soul, my soul at least, longs for something else, not\nabsorption, not quietude, not peace, not appeasement, it longs ever to\napproach and never to arrive, it longs for a never-ending longing, for\nan eternal hope which is eternally renewed but never wholly fulfilled.\nAnd together with all this, it longs for an eternal lack of something\nand an eternal suffering. A suffering, a pain, thanks to which it grows\nwithout ceasing in consciousness and in longing. Do not write upon the\ngate of heaven that sentence which Dante placed over the threshold of\nhell, _Lasciate ogni speranza!_ Do not destroy time! Our life is a hope\nwhich is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its\nturn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an\neternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus do\nideas exist, but not thus do men live. Thus do ideas exist in the\nGod-Idea, but not thus can men live in the living God, in the God-Man.\n\nAn eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternal\nascent. If there is an end of all suffering, however pure and\nspiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end of all desire,\nwhat is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If in\nparadise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him?\nAnd if even there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God little\nby little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining to\nHim, there does not always remain something more for them to know and\ndesire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shall\nthey not fall asleep?\n\nOr, to sum up, if in heaven there does not remain something of this\ninnermost tragedy of the soul, what sort of a life is that? Is there\nperhaps any greater joy than that of remembering misery--and to remember\nit is to feel it--in time of felicity? Does not the prison haunt the\nfreed prisoner? Does he not miss his former dreams of liberty?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMythological dreams! it will be said. And I have not pretended that they\nare anything else. But has not the mythological dream its content of\ntruth? Are not dream and myth perhaps revelations of an inexpressible\ntruth, of an irrational truth, of a truth that cannot be proven?\n\nMythology! Perhaps; but, as in the days of Plato, we must needs\nmythologize when we come to deal with the other life. But we have just\nseen that whenever we seek to give a form that is concrete, conceivable,\nor in other words, rational, to our primary, primordial, and fundamental\nlonging for an eternal life conscious of itself and of its personal\nindividuality, esthetic, logical, and ethical absurdities are multiplied\nand there is no way of conceiving the beatific vision and the\napocatastasis that is free from contradictions and inconsistencies.\n\nAnd nevertheless!...\n\nNevertheless, yes, we must needs long for it, however absurd it may\nappear to us; nay, more, we must needs believe in it, in some way or\nanother, in order that we may live. In order that we may live, eh? not\nin order that we may understand the Universe. We must needs believe in\nit, and to believe in it is to be religious. Christianity, the only\nreligion which we Europeans of the twentieth century are really capable\nof feeling, is, as Kierkegaard said, a desperate sortie (_Afsluttende\nuvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, ii., i., cap. i.), a sortie which can be\nsuccessful only by means of the martyrdom of faith, which is, according\nto this same tragic thinker, the crucifixion of reason.\n\nNot without reason did he who had the right to do so speak of the\nfoolishness of the cross. Foolishness, without doubt, foolishness. And\nthe American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was not altogether wide of\nthe mark in making one of the characters in his ingenious conversations\nsay that he thought better of those who were confined in a lunatic\nasylum on account of religious mania than of those who, while professing\nthe same religious principles, kept their wits and appeared to enjoy\nlife very well outside of the asylums.[53] But those who are at large,\nare they not really, thanks to God, mad too? Are there not mild\nmadnesses, which not only permit us to mix with our neighbours without\ndanger to society, but which rather enable us to do so, for by means of\nthem we are able to attribute a meaning and finality to life and society\nthemselves?\n\nAnd after all, what is madness and how can we distinguish it from\nreason, unless we place ourselves outside both the one and the other,\nwhich for us is impossible?\n\nMadness perhaps it is, and great madness, to seek to penetrate into the\nmystery of the Beyond; madness to seek to superimpose the\nself-contradictory dreams of our imagination upon the dictates of a sane\nreason. And a sane reason tells us that nothing can be built up without\nfoundations, and that it is not merely an idle but a subversive task to\nfill the void of the unknown with fantasies. And nevertheless....\n\nWe must needs believe in the other life, in the eternal life beyond the\ngrave, and in an individual and personal life, in a life in which each\none of us may feel his consciousness and fed that it is united, without\nbeing confounded, with all other consciousnesses in the Supreme\nConsciousness, in God; we must needs believe in that other life in order\nthat we may live this life, and endure it, and give it meaning and\nfinality. And we must needs believe in that other life, perhaps, in\norder that we may deserve it, in order that we may obtain it, for it may\nbe that he neither deserves it nor will obtain it who does not\npassionately desire it above reason and, if need be, against reason.\n\nAnd above all, we must feel and act as if an endless continuation of\nour earthly life awaited us after death; and if it be that nothingness\nis the fate that awaits us we must not, in the words of _Obermann_, so\nact that it shall be a just fate.\n\nAnd this leads us directly to the examination of the practical or\nethical aspect of our sole problem.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[47] _De natura deorum_, lib. i., cap. 41.\n\n[48] _Op. cit._\n\n[49] _Gu\u00eda Espiritual que desembaraza al alma y la conduce por el\ninterior camino para alcanzar la perfecta contemplaci\u00f3n y el rico tesoro\nde la paz interior_, book iii., chap. xviii., \u00a7 185.\n\n[50]\n\n    O land of Alvargonz\u00e1lez,\n    In the heart of Spain,\n    Sad land, poor land,\n    So sad that it has a soul!\n\n[51]\n\n    To living a life of blessed quiet here on earth,\n    Either matter or soul is a hindrance.\n\n[52] Eso que llaman derecho penal, y que es todo menos derecho.\n\n[53] _The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table._\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE PRACTICAL PROBLEM\n\n     L'homme est p\u00e9rissable. II se peut; mais p\u00e9rissons en r\u00e9sistant,\n     et, si le n\u00e9ant nous est reserv\u00e9, ne faisons pas que ce soit une\n     justice.--S\u00c9NANCOUR: _Obermann_, lettre xc.\n\n\nSeveral times in the devious course of these essays I have defined, in\nspite of my horror of definitions, my own position with regard to the\nproblem that I have been examining; but I know there will always be some\ndissatisfied reader, educated in some dogmatism or other, who will say:\n\"This man comes to no conclusion, he vacillates--now he seems to affirm\none thing and then its contrary--he is full of contradictions--I can't\nlabel him. What is he?\" Just this--one who affirms contraries, a man of\ncontradiction and strife, as Jeremiah said of himself; one who says one\nthing with his heart and the contrary with his head, and for whom this\nconflict is the very stuff of life. And that is as clear as the water\nthat flows from the melted snow upon the mountain tops.\n\nI shall be told that this is an untenable position, that a foundation\nmust be laid upon which to build our action and our works, that it is\nimpossible to live by contradictions, that unity and clarity are\nessential conditions of life and thought, and that it is necessary to\nunify thought. And this leaves us as we were before. For it is precisely\nthis inner contradiction that unifies my life and gives it its practical\npurpose.\n\nOr rather it is the conflict itself, it is this self-same passionate\nuncertainty, that unifies my action and makes me live and work.\n\nWe think in order that we may live, I have said; but perhaps it were\nmore correct to say that we think because we live, and the form of our\nthought corresponds with that of our life. Once more I must repeat that\nour ethical and philosophical doctrines in general are usually merely\nthe justification _a posteriori_ of our conduct, of our actions. Our\ndoctrines are usually the means we seek in order to explain and justify\nto others and to ourselves our own mode of action. And this, be it\nobserved, not merely for others, but for ourselves. The man who does not\nreally know why he acts as he does and not otherwise, feels the\nnecessity of explaining to himself the motive of his action and so he\nforges a motive. What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are\nusually but the pretexts for it. The very same reason which one man may\nregard as a motive for taking care to prolong his life may be regarded\nby another man as a motive for shooting himself.\n\nNevertheless it cannot be denied that reasons, ideas, have an influence\nupon human actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a process\nanalogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is so\nbecause of the tendency in every idea to resolve itself into action--an\nidea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion that\nsuggested to Fouill\u00e9e his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideas\nare forces which we accommodate to other forces, deeper and much less\nconscious.\n\nBut putting all this aside for the present, what I wish to establish is\nthat uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our\nfinal destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable\ndogmatic foundation, may be the basis of an ethic.\n\nHe who bases or thinks that he bases his conduct--his inward or his\noutward conduct, his feeling or his action--upon a dogma or theoretical\nprinciple which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a\nfanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or\nshattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If, the earth that he\nthought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for\nwe do not all come up to the standard of the ideal Stoic who remains\nundaunted among the ruins of a world shattered into atoms. Happily the\nstuff that is underneath a man's ideas will save him. For if a man\nshould tell you that he does not defraud or cuckold his best friend only\nbecause he is afraid of hell, you may depend upon it that neither would\nhe do so even if he were to cease to believe in hell, but that he would\ninvent some other excuse instead. And this is all to the honour of the\nhuman race.\n\nBut he who believes that he is sailing, perhaps without a set course, on\nan unstable and sinkable raft, must not be dismayed if the raft gives\nway beneath his feet and threatens to sink. Such a one thinks that he\nacts, not because he deems his principle of action to be true, but in\norder to make it true, in order to prove its truth, in order to create\nhis own spiritual world.\n\nMy conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme\ndesire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of\nthe ultimate and irremediable uncertainty, of the truth of what I hope\nfor, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue,\ntherefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not\nfaith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no\nsecurity or repose--so far as security and repose are obtainable in this\nlife, so essentially insecure and unreposeful--save in conduct that is\npassionately good.\n\nConduct, practice, is the proof of doctrine, theory. \"If any man will do\nHis will--the will of Him that sent me,\" said Jesus, \"he shall know of\nthe doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself\" (John\nvii. 17); and there is a well-known saying of Pascal: \"Begin by taking\nholy water and you will end by becoming a believer.\" And pursuing a\nsimilar train of thought, Johann Jakob Moser, the pietist, was of the\nopinion that no atheist or naturalist had the right to regard the\nChristian religion as void of truth so long as he had not put it to the\nproof by keeping its precepts and commandments (Ritschl, _Geschichte des\nPietismus_, book vii., 43).\n\nWhat is our heart's truth, anti-rational though it be? The immortality\nof the human soul, the truth of the persistence of our consciousness\nwithout any termination whatsoever, the truth of the human finality of\nthe Universe. And what is its moral proof? We may formulate it thus: Act\nso that in your own judgement and in the judgement of others you may\nmerit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that\nyou may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die\nto-morrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of\nmorality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to\ndiscover the finality that belongs to it--if indeed it has any\nfinality--and to discover it by acting.\n\nMore than a century ago, in 1804, in Letter XC of that series that\nconstitutes the immense monody of his _Obermann_, S\u00e9nancour wrote the\nwords which I have put at the head of this chapter--and of all the\nspiritual descendants of the patriarchal Rousseau, S\u00e9nancour was the\nmost profound and the most intense; of all the men of heart and feeling\nthat France has produced, not excluding Pascal, he was the most tragic.\n\"Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if it\nis nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be a\njust fate.\" Change this sentence from its negative to the positive\nform--\"And if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that it\nshall be an unjust fate\"--and you get the firmest basis of action for\nthe man who cannot or will not be a dogmatist.\n\nThat which is irreligious and demoniacal, that which incapacitates us\nfor action and leaves us without any ideal defence against our evil\ntendencies, is the pessimism that Goethe puts into the mouth of\nMephistopheles when he makes him say, \"All that has achieved existence\ndeserves to be destroyed\" (_denn alles was ensteht ist wert doss es\nzugrunde geht_). This is the pessimism which we men call evil, and not\nthat other pessimism that consists in lamenting what it fears to be true\nand struggling against this fear--namely, that everything is doomed to\nannihilation in the end. Mephistopheles asserts that everything that\nexists deserves to be destroyed, annihilated, but not that everything\nwill be destroyed or annihilated; and we assert that everything that\nexists deserves to be exalted and eternalized, even though no such fate\nis in store for it. The moral attitude is the reverse of this.\n\nYes, everything deserves to be eternalized, absolutely everything, even\nevil itself, for that which we call evil would lose its evilness in\nbeing eternalized, because it would lose its temporal nature. For the\nessence of evil consists in its temporal nature, in its not applying\nitself to any ultimate and permanent end.\n\nAnd it might not be superfluous here to say something about that\ndistinction, more overlaid with confusion than any other, between what\nwe are accustomed to call optimism and pessimism, a confusion not less\nthan that which exists with regard to the distinction between\nindividualism and socialism. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to form a\nclear idea as to what pessimism really is.\n\nI have just this very day read in the _Nation_ (July 6, 1912) an\narticle, entitled \"A Dramatic Inferno,\" that deals with an English\ntranslation of the works of Strindberg, and it opens with the following\njudicious observations: \"If there were in the world a sincere and total\npessimism, it would of necessity be silent. The despair which finds a\nvoice is a social mood, it is the cry of misery which brother utters to\nbrother when both are stumbling through a valley of shadows which is\npeopled with--comrades. In its anguish it bears witness to something\nthat is good in life, for it presupposes sympathy ... The real gloom,\nthe sincere despair, is dumb and blind; it writes no books, and feels no\nimpulse to burden an intolerable universe with a monument more lasting\nthan brass.\" Doubtless there is something of sophistry in this\ncriticism, for the man who is really in pain weeps and even cries aloud,\neven if he is alone and there is nobody to hear him, simply as a means\nof alleviating his pain, although this perhaps may be a result of social\nhabits. But does not the lion, alone in the desert, roar if he has an\naching tooth? But apart from this, it cannot be denied that there is a\nsubstance of truth underlying these remarks. The pessimism that protests\nand defends itself cannot be truly said to be pessimism. And, in truth,\nstill less is it pessimism to hold that nothing ought to perish although\nall things may be doomed to annihilation, while on the other hand it is\npessimism to affirm that all things ought to be annihilated even though\nnothing may perish.\n\nPessimism, moreover, may possess different values. There is a\neudemonistic or economic pessimism, that which denies happiness; there\nis an ethical pessimism, that which denies the triumph of moral good;\nand there is a religious pessimism, that which despairs of the human\nfinality of the Universe, of the eternal salvation of the individual\nsoul.\n\nAll men deserve to be saved, but, as I have said in the previous\nchapter, he above all deserves immortality who desires it passionately\nand even in the face of reason. An English writer, H.G. Wells, who has\ntaken upon himself the r\u00f4le of the prophet (a thing not uncommon in his\ncountry), tells us in _Anticipations_ that \"active and capable men of\nall forms of religious profession tend in practice to disregard the\nquestion of immortality altogether.\" And this is because the religious\nprofessions of these active and capable men to whom Wells refers are\nusually simply a lie, and their lives are a lie, too, if they seek to\nbase them upon religion. But it may be that at bottom there is not so\nmuch truth in what Wells asserts as he and others imagine. These active\nand capable men live in the midst of a society imbued with Christian\nprinciples, surrounded by institutions and social feelings that are the\nproduct of Christianity, and faith in the immortality of the soul exists\ndeep down in their own souls like a subterranean river, neither seen nor\nheard, but watering the roots of their deeds and their motives.\n\nIt must be admitted that there exists in truth no more solid foundation\nfor morality than the foundation of the Catholic ethic. The end of man\nis eternal happiness, which consists in the vision and enjoyment of God\n_in s\u00e6cula s\u00e6culorum_. Where it errs, however, is in the choice of the\nmeans conducive to this end; for to make the attainment of eternal\nhappiness dependent upon believing or not believing in the Procession of\nthe Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son and not from the Father\nalone, or in the Divinity of Jesus, or in the theory of the Hypostatic\nUnion, or even in the existence of God, is, as a moment's reflection\nwill show, nothing less than monstrous. A human God--and that is the\nonly kind of God we are able to conceive--would never reject him who was\nunable to believe in Him with his head, and it is not in his head but in\nhis heart that the wicked man says that there is no God, which is\nequivalent to saying that he wishes that there may not be a God. If any\nbelief could be bound up with the attainment of eternal happiness it\nwould be the belief in this happiness itself and in the possibility of\nit.\n\nAnd what shall we say of that other proposition of the king of pedants,\nto the effect that we have not come into the world to be happy but to\nfulfil our duty (_Wir sind nicht auf der Welt, um gl\u00fccklich zu sein,\nsondern um unsere Schuldigkeit zu tun_)? If we are in the world _for_\nsomething (_um etwas_), whence can this _for_ be derived but from the\nvery essence of our own will, which asks for happiness and not duty as\nthe ultimate end? And if it is sought to attribute some other value to\nthis _for_, an objective value, as some Sadducean pedant would say, then\nit must be recognized that the objective reality, that which would\nremain even though humanity should disappear, is as indifferent to our\nduty as to our happiness, is as little concerned with our morality as\nwith our felicity. I am not aware that Jupiter, Uranus, or Sirius would\nallow their course to be affected by the fact that we are or are not\nfulfilling our duty any more than by the fact that we are or are not\nhappy.\n\nSuch considerations must appear to these pedants to be characterized by\na ridiculous vulgarity and a dilettante superficiality. (The\nintellectual world is divided into two classes--dilettanti on the one\nhand, and pedants on the other.) What choice, then, have we? The modern\nman is he who resigns himself to the truth and is content to be ignorant\nof the synthesis of culture--witness what Windelband says on this head\nin his study of the fate of H\u00f6lderlin (_Praeludien_, i.). Yes, these men\nof culture are resigned, but there remain a few poor savages like\nourselves for whom resignation is impossible. We do not resign ourselves\nto the idea of having one day to disappear, and the criticism of the\ngreat Pedant does not console us.\n\nThe quintessence of common sense was expressed by Galileo Galilei when\nhe said: \"Some perhaps will say that the bitterest pain is the loss of\nlife, but I say that there are others more bitter; for whosoever is\ndeprived of life is deprived at the same time of the power to lament,\nnot only this, but any other loss whatsoever.\" Whether Galileo was\nconscious or not of the humour of this sentence I do not know, but it is\na tragic humour.\n\nBut, to turn back, I repeat that if the attainment of eternal happiness\ncould be bound up with any particular belief, it would be with the\nbelief in the possibility of its realization. And yet, strictly\nspeaking, not even with this. The reasonable man says in his head,\n\"There is no other life after this,\" but only the wicked says it in his\nheart. But since the wicked man is possibly only a man who has been\ndriven to despair, will a human God condemn him because of his despair?\nHis despair alone is misfortune enough.\n\nBut in any event let us adopt the Calder\u00f3nian formula in _La Vida es\nSue\u00f1o_:\n\n    _Que estoy so\u00f1ando y que quiero\n    obrar hacer bien, pues no se pierde\n    el hacer bien aun en sue\u00f1os_[54]\n\nBut are good deeds really not lost? Did Calder\u00f3n know? And he added:\n\n    _Acudamos a lo eterno\n    que es la fama vividora\n    donde ni duermen las dichas\n    no las grandezas reposan_[55]\n\nIs it really so? Did Calder\u00f3n know?\n\nCalder\u00f3n had faith, robust Catholic faith; but for him who lacks faith,\nfor him who cannot believe in what Don Pedro Calder\u00f3n de la Barca\nbelieved, there always remains the attitude of _Obermann_.\n\nIf it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let\nus fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory; let us\nfight against it quixotically.\n\nAnd not only do we fight against destiny in longing for what is\nirrational, but in acting in such a way that we make ourselves\nirreplaceable, in impressing our seal and mark upon others, in acting\nupon our neighbours in order to dominate them, in giving ourselves to\nthem in order that we may eternalize ourselves so far as we can.\n\nOur greatest endeavour must be to make ourselves irreplaceable; to make\nthe theoretical fact--if this expression does not involve a\ncontradiction in terms--the fact that each one of us is unique and\nirreplaceable, that no one else can fill the gap that will be left when\nwe die, a practical truth.\n\nFor in fact each man is unique and irreplaceable; there cannot be any\nother I; each one of us--our soul, that is, not our life--is worth the\nwhole Universe. I say the spirit and not the life, for the ridiculously\nexaggerated value which those attach to human life who, not really\nbelieving in the spirit--that is to say, in their personal\nimmortality--tirade against war and the death penalty, for example, is a\nvalue which they attach to it precisely because they do not really\nbelieve in the spirit of which life is the servant. For life is of use\nonly in so far as it serves its lord and master, spirit, and if the\nmaster perishes with the servant, neither the one nor the other is of\nany great value.\n\nAnd to act in such a way as to make our annihilation an injustice, in\nsuch a way as to make our brothers, our sons, and our brothers' sons,\nand their sons' sons, feel that we ought not to have died, is something\nthat is within the reach of all.\n\nThe essence of the doctrine of the Christian redemption is in the fact\nthat he who suffered agony and death was the unique man--that is, Man,\nthe Son of Man, or the Son of God; that he, because he was sinless, did\nnot deserve to have died; and that this propitiatory divine victim died\nin order that he might rise again and that he might raise us up from the\ndead, in order that he might deliver us from death by applying his\nmerits to us and showing us the way of life. And the Christ who gave\nhimself for his brothers in humanity with an absolute self-abnegation is\nthe pattern for our action to shape itself on.\n\nAll of us, each one of us, can and ought to determine to give as much\nof himself as he possibly can--nay, to give more than he can, to exceed\nhimself, to go beyond himself, to make himself irreplaceable, to give\nhimself to others in order that he may receive himself back again from\nthem. And each one in his own civil calling or office. The word office,\n_officium_, means obligation, debt, but in the concrete, and that is\nwhat it always ought to mean in practice. We ought not so much to try to\nseek that particular calling which we think most fitting and suitable\nfor ourselves, as to make a calling of that employment in which chance,\nProvidence, or our own will has placed us.\n\nPerhaps Luther rendered no greater service to Christian civilization\nthan that of establishing the religious value of the civil occupation,\nof shattering the monastic and medieval idea of the religious calling,\nan idea involved in the mist of human passions and imaginations and the\ncause of terrible life tragedies. If we could but enter into the\ncloister and examine the religious vocation of those whom the\nself-interest of their parents had forced as children into a novice's\ncell and who had suddenly awakened to the life of the world--if indeed\nthey ever do awake!--or of those whom their own self-delusions had led\ninto it! Luther saw this life of the cloister at close quarters and\nsuffered it himself, and therefore he was able to understand and feel\nthe religious value of the civil calling, to which no man is bound by\nperpetual vows.\n\nAll that the Apostle said in the fourth chapter of his Epistle to the\nEphesians with regard to the respective functions of Christians in the\nChurch must be transferred and applied to the civil or\nnon-ecclesiastical life, for to-day among ourselves the\nChristian--whether he know it or not, and whether he like it or not--is\nthe citizen, and just as the Apostle exclaimed, \"I am a Roman citizen!\"\neach one of us, even the atheist, might exclaim \"I am a Christian!\" And\nthis demands the _civilizing_, in the sense of dis-ecclesiasticizing, of\nChristianity, which was Luther's task, although he himself eventually\nbecame the founder of a Church.\n\nThere is a common English phrase, \"the right man in the right place.\" To\nwhich we might rejoin, \"Cobbler, to thy last!\" Who knows what is the\npost that suits him best and for which he is most fitted? Does a man\nhimself know it better than others or do they know it better than he?\nWho can measure capacities and aptitudes? The religious attitude,\nundoubtedly, is to endeavour to make the occupation in which we find\nourselves our vocation, and only in the last resort to change it for\nanother.\n\nThis question of the proper vocation is possibly the gravest and most\ndeep-seated of social problems, that which is at the root of all the\nothers. That which is known _par excellence_ as the social question is\nperhaps not so much a problem of the distribution of wealth, of the\nproducts of labour, as a problem of the distribution of avocations, of\nthe modes of production. It is not aptitude--a thing impossible to\nascertain without first putting it to the test and not always clearly\nindicated in a man, for with regard to the majority of callings a man is\nnot born but made--it is not special aptitude, but rather social,\npolitical, and customary reasons that determine a man's occupation. At\ncertain times and in certain countries it is caste and heredity; at\nother times and in other places, the guild or corporation; in later\ntimes machinery--in almost all cases necessity; liberty scarcely ever.\nAnd the tragedy of it culminates in those occupations, pandering to\nevil, in which the soul is sacrificed for the sake of the livelihood, in\nwhich the workman works with the consciousness, not of the uselessness\nmerely, but of the social perversity, of his work, manufacturing the\npoison that will kill him, the weapon, perchance, with which his\nchildren will be murdered. This, and not the question of wages, is the\ngravest problem.\n\nI shall never forget a scene of which I was a witness that took place\non the banks of the river that flows through Bilbao, my native town. A\nworkman was hammering at something in a shipwright's yard, working\nwithout putting his heart into his work, as if he lacked energy or\nworked merely for the sake of getting a wage, when suddenly a woman's\nvoice was heard crying, \"Help! help!\" A child had fallen into the river.\nInstantly the man was transformed. With an admirable energy,\npromptitude, and sang-froid he threw off his clothes and plunged into\nthe water to rescue the drowning infant.\n\nPossibly the reason why there is less bitterness in the agrarian\nsocialist movement than in that of the towns is that the field labourer,\nalthough his wages and his standard of living are no better than those\nof the miner or artisan, has a clearer consciousness of the social value\nof his work. Sowing corn is a different thing from extracting diamonds\nfrom the earth.\n\nAnd it may be that the greatest social progress consists in a certain\nindifferentiation of labour, in the facility for exchanging one kind of\nwork for another, and that other not perhaps a more lucrative, but a\nnobler one--for there are degrees of nobility in labour. But unhappily\nit is only too seldom that a man who keeps to one occupation without\nchanging is concerned with making a religious vocation of it, or that\nthe man who changes his occupation for another does so from any\nreligious motive.\n\nAnd do you not know cases in which a man, justifying his action on the\nground that the professional organism to which he belongs and in which\nhe works is badly organized and does not function as it ought, will\nevade the strict performance of his duty on the pretext that he is\nthereby fulfilling a higher duty? Is not this insistence upon the\nliteral carrying out of orders called disciplinarianism, and do not\npeople speak disparagingly of bureaucracy and the Pharisaism of public\nofficials? And cases occur not unlike that of an intelligent and\nstudious military officer who should discover the deficiencies of his\ncountry's military organization and denounce them to his superiors and\nperhaps to the public--thereby fulfilling his duty--and who, when on\nactive service, should refuse to carry out an operation which he was\nordered to undertake, believing that there was but scant probability of\nsuccess or rather certainty of failure, so long as these deficiencies\nremained unremedied. He would deserve to be shot. And as for this\nquestion of Pharisaism ...\n\nAnd there is always a way of obeying an order while yet retaining the\ncommand, a way of carrying out what one believes to be an absurd\noperation while correcting its absurdity, even though it involve one's\nown death. When in my bureaucratic capacity I have come across some\nlegislative ordinance that has fallen into desuetude because of its\nmanifest absurdity, I have always endeavoured to apply it. There is\nnothing worse than a loaded pistol which nobody uses left lying in some\ncorner of the house; a child finds it, begins to play with it, and kills\nits own father. Laws that have fallen into desuetude are the most\nterrible of all laws, when the cause of the desuetude is the badness of\nthe law.\n\nAnd these are not groundless suppositions, and least of all in our\ncountry. For there are many who, while they go about looking out for I\nknow not what ideal--that is to say, fictitious duties and\nresponsibilities--neglect the duty of putting their whole soul into the\nimmediate and concrete business which furnishes them with a living; and\nthe rest, the immense majority, perform their task perfunctorily, merely\nfor the sake of nominally complying with their duty--_para cumplir_, a\nterribly immoral phrase--in order to get themselves out of a difficulty,\nto get the job done, to qualify for their wages without earning them,\nwhether these wages be pecuniary or otherwise.\n\nHere you have a shoemaker who lives by making shoes, and makes them with\njust enough care and attention to keep his client\u00e8le together without\nlosing custom. Another shoemaker lives on a somewhat higher spiritual\nplane, for he has a proper love for his work, and out of pride or a\nsense of honour strives for the reputation of being the best shoemaker\nin the town or in the kingdom, even though this reputation brings him no\nincrease of custom or profit, but only renown and prestige. But there is\na still higher degree of moral perfection in this business of\nshoemaking, and that is for the shoemaker to aspire to become for his\nfellow-townsmen the one and only shoemaker, indispensable and\nirreplaceable, the shoemaker who looks after their footgear so well that\nthey will feel a definite loss when he dies--when he is \"dead to them,\"\nnot merely \"dead\"[56]--and they will feel that he ought not to have\ndied. And this will result from the fact that in working for them he was\nanxious to spare them any discomfort and to make sure that it should not\nbe any preoccupation with their feet that should prevent them from being\nat leisure to contemplate the higher truths; he shod them for the love\nof them and for the love of God in them--he shod them religiously.\n\nI have chosen this example deliberately, although it may perhaps appear\nto you somewhat pedestrian. For the fact is that in this business of\nshoemaking, the religious, as opposed to the ethical, sense is at a very\nlow ebb.\n\nWorking men group themselves in associations, they form co-operative\nsocieties and unions for defence, they fight very justly and nobly for\nthe betterment of their class; but it is not clear that these\nassociations have any great influence on their moral attitude towards\ntheir work. They have succeeded in compelling employers to employ only\nsuch workmen, and no others, as the respective unions shall designate in\neach particular case; but in the selection of those designated they pay\nlittle heed to their technical fitness. Often the employer finds it\nalmost impossible to dismiss an inefficient workman on account of his\ninefficiency, for his fellow-workers take his part. Their work,\nmoreover, is often perfunctory, performed merely as a pretext for\nreceiving a wage, and instances even occur when they deliberately\nmishandle it in order to injure their employer.\n\nIn attempting to justify this state of things, it may be said that the\nemployers are a hundred times more blameworthy than the workmen, for\nthey are not concerned to give a better wage to the man who does better\nwork, or to foster the general education and technical proficiency of\nthe workman, or to ensure the intrinsic goodness of the article\nproduced. The improvement of the product--which, apart from reasons of\nindustrial and mercantile competition, ought to be in itself and for the\ngood of the consumers, for charity's sake, the chief end of the\nbusiness--is not so regarded either by employers or employed, and this\nis because neither the one nor the other have any religious sense of\ntheir social function. Neither of them seek to make themselves\nirreplaceable. The evil is aggravated when the business takes the\nunhappy form of the impersonal limited company, for where there is no\nlonger any personal signature there is no longer any of that pride which\nseeks to give the signature prestige, a pride which in its way is a\nsubstitute for the craving for eternalization. With the disappearance of\nthe concrete individuality, the basis of all religion, the religious\nsense of the business calling disappears also.\n\nAnd what has been said of employers and workmen applies still more to\nmembers of the liberal professions and public functionaries. There is\nscarcely a single servant of the State who feels the religious bearing\nof his official and public duties. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory,\nnothing more confused, than the feeling among our people with regard to\ntheir duties towards the State, and this sense of duty is still further\nobliterated by the attitude of the Catholic Church, whose action so far\nas the State is concerned is in strict truth anarchical. It is no\nuncommon thing to find among its ministers upholders of the moral\nlawfulness of smuggling and contraband as if in disobeying the legally\nconstituted authority the smuggler and contrabandist did not sin against\nthe Fourth Commandment of the law of God, which in commanding us to\nhonour our father and mother commands us to obey all lawful authority in\nso far as the ordinances of such authority are not contrary (and the\nlevying of these contributions is certainly not contrary) to the law of\nGod.\n\nThere are many who, since it is written \"In the sweat of thy face shalt\nthou eat bread,\" regard work as a punishment, and therefore they\nattribute merely an economico-political, or at best an esthetic, value\nto the work of everyday life. For those who take this view--and it is\nthe view principally held by the Jesuits--the business of life is\ntwofold: there is the inferior and transitory business of winning a\nlivelihood, of winning bread for ourselves and our children in an\nhonourable, manner--and the elasticity of this honour is well known; and\nthere is the grand business of our salvation, of winning eternal glory.\nThis inferior or worldly business is to be undertaken not only so as to\npermit us, without deceiving or seriously injuring our neighbours, to\nlive decently in accordance with our social position, but also so as to\nafford us the greatest possible amount of time for attending to the\nother main business of our life. And there are others who, rising\nsomewhat above this conception of the work of our civil occupation, a\nconception which is economical rather than ethical, attain to an\nesthetic conception and sense of it, and this involves endeavouring to\nacquire distinction and renown in our occupation, the converting of it\ninto an art for art's sake, for beauty's sake. But it is necessary to\nrise still higher than this, to attain to an ethical sense of our civil\ncalling, to a sense which derives from our religious sense, from our\nhunger of eternalization. To work at our ordinary civil occupation, with\neyes fixed on God, for the love of God, which is equivalent to saying\nfor the love of our eternalization, is to make of this work a work of\nreligion.\n\nThat saying, \"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,\" does not\nmean that God condemned man to work, but to the painfulness of it. It\nwould have been no condemnation to have condemned man to work itself,\nfor work is the only practical consolation for having been born. And,\nfor a Christian, the proof that God did not condemn man to work itself\nconsists in the saying of the Scripture that, before the Fall, while he\nwas still in a state of innocence, God took man and put him in the\ngarden \"to dress it and to keep it\" (Gen. ii. 15). And how, in fact,\nwould man have passed his time in Paradise if he had had no work to do\nin keeping it in order? And may it not be that the beatific vision\nitself is a kind of work?\n\nAnd even if work were our punishment, we ought to strive to make it, the\npunishment itself, our consolation and our redemption; and if we must\nneeds embrace some cross or other, there is for each one of us no better\ncross than the cross of our own civil calling. For Christ did not say,\n\"Take up my cross and follow me,\" but \"Take up thy cross and follow me\":\nevery man his own cross, for the Saviour's cross the Saviour alone can\nbear. And the imitation of Christ, therefore, does not consist in that\nmonastic ideal so shiningly set forth in the book that commonly bears\nthe name of \u00e0 Kempis, an ideal only applicable to a very limited number\nof persons and therefore anti-Christian; but to imitate Christ is to\ntake up each one his own cross, the cross of his own civil\noccupation--civil and not merely religions--as Christ took up his cross,\nthe cross of his calling, and to embrace it and carry it, looking\ntowards God and striving to make each act of this calling a true prayer.\nIn making shoes and because he makes them a man can gain heaven,\nprovided that the shoemaker strives to be perfect, as a shoemaker, as\nour Father in heaven is perfect.\n\nFourier, the socialist dreamer, dreamed of making work attractive in his\nphalansteries by the free choice of vocations and in other ways. There\nis no other way than that of liberty. Wherein consists the charm of the\ngame of chance, which is a kind of work, if not in the voluntary\nsubmission of the player to the liberty of Nature--that is, to chance?\nBut do not let us lose ourselves in a comparison between work and play.\n\nAnd the sense of making ourselves irreplaceable, of not meriting death,\nof making our annihilation, if it is annihilation that awaits us, an\ninjustice, ought to impel us not only to perform our own occupation\nreligiously, from love of God and love of our eternity and\neternalization, but to perform it passionately, tragically if you like.\nIt ought to impel us to endeavour to stamp others with our seal, to\nperpetuate ourselves in them and in their children by dominating them,\nto leave on all things the imperishable impress of our signature. The\nmost fruitful ethic is the ethic of mutual imposition.\n\nAbove all, we must recast in a positive form the negative commandments\nwhich we have inherited from the Ancient Law. Thus where it is written,\n\"Thou shalt not lie!\" let us understand, \"Thou shalt always speak the\ntruth, in season and out of season!\" although it is we ourselves, and\nnot others, who are judges in each case of this seasonableness. And for\n\"Thou shalt not kill!\" let us understand, \"Thou shalt give life and\nincrease it!\" And for \"Thou shalt not steal!\" let us say, \"Thou shalt\nincrease the general wealth!\" And for \"Thou shalt not commit adultery!\"\n\"Thou shalt give children, healthy, strong, and good, to thy country and\nto heaven!\" And thus with all the other commandments.\n\nHe who does not lose his life shall not find it. Give yourself then to\nothers, but in order to give yourself to them, first dominate them. For\nit is not possible to dominate except by being dominated. Everyone\nnourishes himself upon the flesh of that which he devours. In order that\nyou may dominate your neighbour you must know and love him. It is by\nattempting to impose my ideas upon him that I become the recipient of\nhis ideas. To love my neighbour is to wish that he may be like me, that\nhe may be another I--that is to say, it is to wish that I may be he; it\nis to wish to obliterate the division between him and me, to suppress\nthe evil. My endeavour to impose myself upon another, to be and live in\nhim and by him, to make him mine--which is the same as making myself\nhis--is that which gives religious meaning to human collectivity, to\nhuman solidarity.\n\nThe feeling of solidarity originates in myself; since I am a society, I\nfeel the need of making myself master of human society; since I am a\nsocial product, I must socialize myself, and from myself I proceed to\nGod--who is I projected to the All--and from God to each of my\nneighbours.\n\nMy immediate first impulse is to protest against the inquisitor and to\nprefer the merchant who comes to offer me his wares. But when my\nimpressions are clarified by reflection, I begin to see that the\ninquisitor, when he acts from a right motive, treats me as a man, as an\nend in myself, and if he molests me it is from a charitable wish to save\nmy soul; while the merchant, on the other hand, regards me merely as a\ncustomer, as a means to an end, and his indulgence and tolerance is at\nbottom nothing but a supreme indifference to my destiny. There is much\nmore humanity in the inquisitor.\n\nSimilarly there is much more humanity in war than in peace.\nNon-resistance to evil implies resistance to good, and to take the\noffensive, leaving the defensive out of the question, is perhaps the\ndivinest thing in humanity. War is the school of fraternity and the bond\nof love; it is war that has brought peoples into touch with one\nanother, by mutual aggression and collision, and has been the cause of\ntheir knowing and loving one another. Human love knows no purer embrace,\nor one more fruitful in its consequences, than that between victor and\nvanquished on the battlefield. And even the purified hate that springs\nfrom war is fruitful. War is, in its strictest sense, the sanctification\nof homicide; Cain is redeemed as a leader of armies. And if Cain had not\nkilled his brother Abel, perhaps he would have died by the hand of Abel.\nGod revealed Himself above all in war; He began by being the God of\nbattles; and one of the greatest services of the Cross is that, in the\nform of the sword-hilt, it protects the hand that wields the sword.\n\nThe enemies of the State say that Cain, the fratricide, was the founder\nof the State. And we must accept the fact and turn it to the glory of\nthe State, the child of war. Civilization began on the day on which one\nman, by subjecting another to his will and compelling him to do the work\nof two, was enabled to devote himself to the contemplation of the world\nand to set his captive upon works of luxury. It was slavery that enabled\nPlato to speculate upon the ideal republic, and it was war that brought\nslavery about. Not without reason was Athena the goddess of war and of\nwisdom. But is there any need to repeat once again these obvious truths,\nwhich, though they have continually been forgotten, are continually\nrediscovered?\n\nAnd the supreme commandment that arises out of love towards God, and the\nfoundation of all morality, is this: Yield yourself up entirely, give\nyour spirit to the end that you may save it, that you may eternalize it.\nSuch is the sacrifice of life.\n\nThe individual _qu\u00e2_ individual, the wretched captive of the instinct of\npreservation and of the senses, cares only about preserving himself, and\nall his concern is that others should not force their way into his\nsphere, should not disturb him, should not interrupt his idleness; and\nin return for their abstention or for the sake of example he refrains\nfrom forcing himself upon them, from interrupting their idleness, from\ndisturbing them, from taking possession of them. \"Do not do unto others\nwhat you would not have them do unto you,\" he translates thus: I do not\ninterfere with others--let them not interfere with me. And he shrinks\nand pines and perishes in this spiritual avarice and this repellent\nethic of anarchic individualism: each one for himself. And as each one\nis not himself, he can hardly live for himself.\n\nBut as soon as the individual feels himself in society, he feels himself\nin God, and kindled by the instinct of perpetuation he glows with love\ntowards God, and with a dominating charity he seeks to perpetuate\nhimself in others, to perennialize his spirit, to eternalize it, to\nunnail God, and his sole desire is to seal his spirit upon other spirits\nand to receive their impress in return. He has shaken off the yoke of\nhis spiritual sloth and avarice.\n\nSloth, it is said, is the mother of all the vices; and in fact sloth\ndoes engender two vices--avarice and envy--which in their turn are the\nsource of all the rest. Sloth is the weight of matter, in itself inert,\nwithin us, and this sloth, while it professes to preserve us by\neconomizing our forces, in reality attenuates us and reduces us to\nnothing.\n\nIn man there is either too much matter or too much spirit, or to put it\nbetter, either he feels a hunger for spirit--that is, for eternity--or\nhe feels a hunger for matter--that is, submission to annihilation. When\nspirit is in excess and he feels a hunger for yet more of it, he pours\nit forth and scatters it abroad, and in scattering it abroad he\namplifies it with that of others; and on the contrary, when a man is\navaricious of himself and thinks that he will preserve himself better by\nwithdrawing within himself, he ends by losing all--he is like the man\nwho received the single talent: he buried it in order that he might not\nlose it, and in the end he was bereft of it. For to him that hath shall\nbe given, but from him that hath but a little shall be taken away even\nthe little that he hath.\n\nBe ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect, we are bidden,\nand this terrible precept--terrible because for us the infinite\nperfection of the Father is unattainable--must be our supreme rule of\nconduct. Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he\nachieves will be scarcely worth the trouble of achieving. It behoves us\nto aspire to the impossible, to the absolute and infinite perfection,\nand to say to the Father, \"Father, I cannot--help Thou my impotence.\"\nAnd He acting in us will achieve it for us.\n\nAnd to be perfect is to be all, it is to be myself and to be all else,\nit is to be humanity, it is to be the Universe. And there is no other\nway of being all but to give oneself to all, and when all shall be in\nall, all will be in each one of us. The apocatastasis is more than a\nmystical dream: it is a rule of action, it is a beacon beckoning us to\nhigh exploits.\n\nAnd from it springs the ethic of invasion, of domination, of aggression,\nof inquisition if you like. For true charity is a kind of invasion--it\nconsists in putting my spirit into other spirits, in giving them my\nsuffering as the food and consolation for their sufferings, in awakening\ntheir unrest with my unrest, in sharpening their hunger for God with my\nhunger for God. It is not charity to rock and lull our brothers to sleep\nin the inertia and drowsiness of matter, but rather to awaken them to\nthe uneasiness and torment of spirit.\n\nTo the fourteen works of mercy which we learnt in the Catechism of\nChristian Doctrine there should sometimes be added yet another, that of\nawakening the sleeper. Sometimes, at any rate, and surely when the\nsleeper sleeps on the brink of a precipice, it is much more merciful to\nawaken him than to bury him after he is dead--let us leave the dead to\nbury their dead. It has been well said, \"Whosoever loves thee dearly\nwill make thee weep,\" and charity often causes weeping. \"The love that\ndoes not mortify does not deserve so divine a name,\" said that ardent\nPortuguese apostle, Fr. Thom\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas,[57] who was also the author of\nthis ejaculation--\"O infinite fire, O eternal love, who weepest when\nthou hast naught to embrace and feed upon and many hearts to burn!\" He\nwho loves his neighbour burns his heart, and the heart, like green wood,\nin burning groans and distils itself in tears.\n\nAnd to do this is generosity, one of the two mother virtues which are\nborn when inertia, sloth, is overcome. Most of our miseries come from\nspiritual avarice.\n\nThe cure for suffering--which, as we have said, is the collision of\nconsciousness with unconsciousness--is not to be submerged in\nunconsciousness, but to be raised to consciousness and to suffer more.\nThe evil of suffering is cured by more suffering, by higher suffering.\nDo not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul's wound, for\nwhen you sleep and no longer feel the suffering, you are not. And to be,\nthat is imperative. Do not then close your eyes to the agonizing Sphinx,\nbut look her in the face and let her seize you in her mouth and crunch\nyou with her hundred thousand poisonous teeth and swallow you. And when\nshe has swallowed you, you will know the sweetness of the taste of\nsuffering.\n\nThe way thereto in practice is by the ethic of mutual imposition. Men\nshould strive to impose themselves upon one another, to give their\nspirits to one another, to seal one another's souls.\n\nThere is matter for thought in the fact that the Christian ethic has\nbeen called an ethic of slaves. By whom? By anarchists! It is anarchism\nthat is an ethic of slaves, for it is only the slave that chants the\npraises of anarchical liberty. Anarchism, no! but _panarchism_; not the\ncreed of \"Nor God nor master!\" but that of \"All gods and all masters!\"\nall striving to become gods, to become immortal, and achieving this by\ndominating others.\n\nAnd there are so many ways of dominating. There is even a passive way,\nor one at least that is apparently passive, of fulfilling at times this\nlaw of life. Adaptation to environment, imitation, putting oneself in\nanother's place, sympathy, in a word, besides being a manifestation of\nthe unity of the species, is a mode of self-expansion, of being another.\nTo be conquered, or at least to seem to be conquered, is often to\nconquer; to take what is another's is a way of living in him.\n\nAnd in speaking of domination, I do not mean the domination of the\ntiger. The fox also dominates by cunning, and the hare by flight, and\nthe viper by poison, and the mosquito by its smallness, and the squid by\nthe inky fluid with which it darkens the water and under cover of which\nit escapes. And no one is scandalized at this, for the same universal\nFather who gave its fierceness, its talons, and its jaws to the tiger,\ngave cunning to the fox, swift feet to the hare, poison to the viper,\ndiminutiveness to the mosquito, and its inky fluid to the squid. And\nnobleness or ignobleness does not consist in the weapons we use, for\nevery species and even every individual possesses its own, but rather in\nthe way in which we use them, and above all in the cause in which we\nwield them.\n\nAnd among the weapons of conquest must be included the weapon of\npatience and of resignation, but a passionate patience and a passionate\nresignation, containing within itself an active principle and antecedent\nlongings. You remember that famous sonnet of Milton--Milton, the great\nfighter, the great Puritan disturber of the spiritual peace, the singer\nof Satan--who, when he considered how his light was spent and that one\ntalent which it is death to hide lodged with him useless, heard the\nvoice of Patience saying to him,\n\n                        God doth not need\n    Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best\n    Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best: his state\n    Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,\n    And post o'er land and ocean without rest;\n    They also serve who only stand and wait.\n\nThey also serve who only stand and wait--yes, but it is when they wait\nfor Him passionately, hungeringly, full of longing for immortality in\nHim.\n\nAnd we must impose ourselves, even though it be by our patience. \"My cup\nis small, but I drink out of my cup,\" said the egoistical poet of an\navaricious people.[58] No, out of my cup all drink, for I wish all to\ndrink out of it; I offer it to them, and my cup grows according to the\nnumber of those who drink out of it, and all, in putting it to their\nlips, leave in it something of their spirit. And while they drink out of\nmy cup, I also drink out of theirs. For the more I belong to myself, and\nthe more I am myself, the more I belong to others; out of the fullness\nof myself I overflow upon my brothers, and as I overflow upon them they\nenter into me.\n\n\"Be ye perfect, as your Father is perfect,\" we are bidden, and our\nFather is perfect because He is Himself and because He is in each one of\nHis children who live and move and have their being in Him. And the end\nof perfection is that we all may be one (John xvii. 21), all one body in\nChrist (Rom. xii. 5), and that, at the last, when all things are subdued\nunto the Son, the Son himself may be subject to Him that put all things\nunder him, that God may be all in all. And this is to make the Universe\nconsciousness, to make Nature a society, and a human society. And then\nshall we be able confidently to call God Father.\n\nI am aware that those who say that ethics is a science will say that\nall this commentary of mine is nothing but rhetoric; but each man has\nhis own language and his own passion--that is to say, each man who knows\nwhat passion is--and as for the man who knows it not, nothing will it\navail him to know science.\n\nAnd the passion that finds its expression in this rhetoric, the devotees\nof ethical science call egotism. But this egotism is the only true\nremedy for egoism, spiritual avarice, the vice of preserving and\nreserving oneself and of not striving to perennialize oneself by giving\noneself.\n\n\"Be not, and ye shall be mightier than all that is,\" said Fr. Juan de\nlos Angeles in one of his _Di\u00e1logos de la Conquista del Reina de Dios_\n(_Dial._, iii., 8); but what does this \"Be not\" mean? May it not mean\nparadoxically--and such a mode of expression is common with the\nmystics--the contrary of that which, at a first and literal reading, it\nwould appear to mean? Is not the whole ethic of submission and quietism\nan immense paradox, or rather a great tragic contradiction? Is not the\nmonastic, the strictly monastic, ethic an absurdity? And by the monastic\nethic I mean that of the solitary Carthusian, that of the hermit, who\nflees from the world--perhaps carrying it with him nevertheless--in\norder that he may live quite alone with a God who is lonely as himself;\nnot that of the Dominican inquisitor who scoured Provence in search of\nAlbigensian hearts to burn.\n\n\"Let God do it all,\" someone will say; but if man folds his arms, God\nwill go to sleep.\n\nThis Carthusian ethic and that scientific ethic which is derived from\nethical science--oh, this science of ethics! rational and rationalistic\nethics! pedantry of pedantry, all is pedantry!--yes, this perhaps is\negoism and coldness of heart.\n\nThere are some who say that they isolate themselves with God in order\nthat they may the better work out their salvation, their redemption; but\nsince sin is collective, redemption must be collective also. \"The\nreligious is the determination of the whole, and everything outside this\nis an illusion of the senses, and that is why the greatest criminal is\nat bottom innocent, a good-natured man and a saint\" (Kierkegaard,\n_Afsluttende_, etc., ii., ii., cap. iv., sect. 2, _a_).\n\nAre we to understand, on the other hand, that men seek to gain the\nother, the eternal life, by renouncing this the temporal life? If the\nother life is anything, it must be a continuation of this, and only as\nsuch a continuation, more or less purified, is it mirrored in our\ndesire; and if this is so, such as is this life of time, so will be the\nlife of eternity.\n\n\"This world and the other are like the two wives of one husband--if he\npleases one he makes the other envious,\" said an Arab thinker, quoted by\nWindelband (_Das Heilige_, in vol. ii. of _Pr\u00e4ludien_); but such a\nthought could only have arisen in the mind of one who had failed to\nresolve the tragic conflict between his spirit and the world in a\nfruitful warfare, a practical contradiction. \"Thy kingdom come\" to us;\nso Christ taught us to pray to the Father, not \"May we come to Thy\nkingdom\"; and according to the primitive Christian belief the eternal\nlife was to be realized on this earth itself and as a continuation of\nthe earthly life. We were made men and not angels in order that we might\nseek our happiness through the medium of this life, and the Christ of\nthe Christian Faith became, not an angelic, but a human, being,\nredeeming us by taking upon himself a real and effective body and not an\nappearance of one merely. And according to this same Faith, even the\nhighest of the angelical hierarchy adore the Virgin, the supreme symbol\nof terrestrial Humanity. The angelical ideal, therefore, is not the\nChristian ideal, and still less is it the human ideal, nor can it be. An\nangel, moreover, is a neutral being, without sex and without country.\n\nIt is impossible for us to feel the other life, the eternal life, I have\nalready repeated more than once, as a life of angelical contemplation;\nit must be a life of action. Goethe said that \"man must believe in\nimmortality, since in his nature he has a right to it.\" And he added:\n\"The conviction of our persistence arises in me from the concept of\nactivity. If I work without ceasing to the end, Nature is obliged (_so\nist die Natur verpflichtet_) to provide me with another form of\nexistence, since my actual spirit can bear no more.\" Change Nature to\nGod, and you have a thought that remains Christian in character, for the\nfirst Fathers of the Church did not believe that the immortality of the\nsoul was a natural gift--that is to say, something rational--but a\ndivine gift of grace. And that which is of grace is usually, in its\nessence, of justice, since justice is divine and gratuitous, not\nnatural. And Goethe added: \"I could begin nothing with an eternal\nhappiness before me, unless new tasks and new difficulties were given me\nto overcome.\" And true it is that there is no happiness in a vacuity of\ncontemplation.\n\nBut may there not be some justification for the morality of the hermit,\nof the Carthusian, the ethic of the Thebaid? Might we not say, perhaps,\nthat it is necessary to preserve these exceptional types in order that\nthey may stand as everlasting patterns for mankind? Do not men breed\nracehorses, which are useless for any practical kind of work, but which\npreserve the purity of the breed and become the sires of excellent\nhackneys and hunters? Is there not a luxury of ethics, not less\njustifiable than any other sort of luxury? But, on the other hand, is\nnot all this substantially esthetics, and not ethics, still less\nreligion? May not the contemplative, medieval, monastic ideal be\nesthetical, and not religious nor even ethical? And after all, those of\nthe seekers after solitude who have related to us their conversation\nwhen they were alone with God have performed an eternalizing work, they\nhave concerned themselves with the souls of others. And by this alone,\nthat it has given us an Eckhart, a Seuse, a Tauler, a Ruysbroek, a Juan\nde la Cruz, a Catherine of Siena, an Angela of Foligno, a Teresa de\nJes\u00fas, is the cloister justified.\n\nBut the chief of our Spanish Orders are the Predicadores, founded by\nDomingo de Guzm\u00e1n for the aggressive work of extirpating heresy; the\nCompany of Jesus, a militia with the world as its field of operations\n(which explains its history); the order of the Escuelas P\u00edas, also\ndevoted to a work of an aggressive or invasive nature, that of\ninstruction. I shall certainly be reminded that the reform of the\ncontemplative Order of the Carmelites which Teresa de Jes\u00fas undertook\nwas a Spanish work. Yes, Spanish it was, and in it men sought liberty.\n\nIt was, in fact, the yearning for liberty, for inward liberty, which, in\nthe troubled days of the Inquisition, led many choice spirits to the\ncloister. They imprisoned themselves in order that they might be more\nfree. \"Is it not a fine thing that a poor nun of San Jos\u00e9 can attain to\nsovereignty over the whole earth and the elements?\" said St. Teresa in\nher _Life_. It was the Pauline yearning for liberty, the longing to\nshake off the bondage of the external law, which was then very severe,\nand, as Maestro Fray Luis de Le\u00f3n said, very stubborn.\n\nBut did they actually find liberty in the cloister? It is very doubtful\nif they did, and to-day it is impossible. For true liberty is not to rid\noneself of the external law; liberty is consciousness of the law. Not he\nwho has shaken off the yoke of the law is free, but he who has made\nhimself master of the law. Liberty must be sought in the midst of the\nworld, which is the domain of the law, and of sin, the offspring of the\nlaw. That which we must be freed from is sin, which is collective.\n\nInstead of renouncing the world in order that we may dominate it--and\nwho does not know the collective instinct of domination of those\nreligious Orders whose members renounce the world?--what we ought to do\nis to dominate the world in order that we may be able to renounce it.\nNot to seek poverty and submission, but to seek wealth in order that we\nmay use it to increase human consciousness, and to seek power for the\nsame end.\n\nIt is curious that monks and anarchists should be at enmity with each\nother, when fundamentally they both profess the same ethic and are\nrelated by close ties of kinship. Anarchism tends to become a kind of\natheistic monachism and a religious, rather than an ethical or\neconomico-social, doctrine. The one party starts from the assumption\nthat man is naturally evil, born in original sin, and that it is through\ngrace that he becomes good, if indeed he ever does become good; and the\nother from the assumption that man is naturally good and is subsequently\nperverted by society. And these two theories really amount to the same\nthing, for in both the individual is opposed to society, as if the\nindividual had preceded society and therefore were destined to survive\nit. And both ethics are ethics of the cloister.\n\nAnd the fact that guilt is collective must not actuate me to throw mine\nupon the shoulders of others, but rather to take upon myself the burden\nof the guilt of others, the guilt of all men; not to merge and sink my\nguilt in the total mass of guilt, but to make this total guilt my own;\nnot to dismiss and banish my own guilt, but to open the doors of my\nheart to the guilt of all men, to centre it within myself and\nappropriate it to myself. And each one of us ought to help to remedy the\nguilt, and just because others do not do so. The fact that society is\nguilty aggravates the guilt of each member of it. \"Someone ought to do\nit, but why should I? is the ever re-echoed phrase of weak-kneed\namiability. Someone ought to do it, so why not I? is the cry of some\nearnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous\nduty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral\nevolution.\" Thus spoke Mrs. Annie Besant in her autobiography. Thus\nspoke theosophy.\n\nThe fact that society is guilty aggravates the guilt of each one, and he\nis most guilty who most is sensible of the guilt. Christ, the innocent,\nsince he best knew the intensity of the guilt, was in a certain sense\nthe most guilty. In him the culpability, together with the divinity, of\nhumanity arrived at the consciousness of itself. Many are wont to be\namused when they read how, because of the most trifling faults, faults\nat which a man of the world would merely smile, the greatest saints\ncounted themselves the greatest sinners. But the intensity of the fault\nis not measured by the external act, but by the consciousness of it, and\nan act for which the conscience of one man suffers acutely makes\nscarcely any impression on the conscience of another. And in a saint,\nconscience may be developed so fully and to such a degree of\nsensitiveness that the slightest sin may cause him more remorse than his\ncrime causes the greatest criminal. And sin rests upon our consciousness\nof it, it is in him who judges and in so far as he judges. When a man\ncommits a vicious act believing in good faith that he is doing a\nvirtuous action, we cannot hold him morally guilty, while on the other\nhand that man is guilty who commits an act which he believes to be\nwrong, even though in itself the act is indifferent or perhaps\nbeneficent. The act passes away, the intention remains, and the evil of\nthe evil act is that it corrupts the intention, that in knowingly doing\nwrong a man is predisposed to go on doing it, that it blurs the\nconscience. And doing evil is not the same as being evil. Evil blurs the\nconscience, and not only the moral conscience but the general, psychical\nconsciousness. And everything that exalts and expands consciousness is\ngood, while that which depresses and diminishes it is evil.\n\nAnd here we might raise the question which, according to Plato, was\npropounded by Socrates, as to whether virtue is knowledge, which is\nequivalent to asking whether virtue is rational.\n\nThe ethicists--those who maintain that ethics is a science, those whom\nthe reading of these divagations will provoke to exclaim, \"Rhetoric,\nrhetoric, rhetoric!\"--would appear to think that virtue is the fruit of\nknowledge, of rational study, and that even mathematics help us to be\nbetter men. I do not know, but for my part I feel that virtue, like\nreligion, like the longing never to die--and all these are fundamentally\nthe same thing--is the fruit of passion.\n\nBut, I shall be asked, What then is passion? I do not know, or rather, I\nknow full well, because I feel it, and since I feel it there is no need\nfor me to define it to myself. Nay, more; I fear that if I were to\narrive at a definition of it, I should cease to feel it and to possess\nit. Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object.\nIt is easier for the fire to find something to burn than for something\ncombustible to find the fire.\n\nThat this may appear empty and sophistical well I know. And I shall also\nbe told that there is the science of passion and the passion of science,\nand that it is in the moral sphere that reason and life unite together.\n\nI do not know, I do not know, I do not know.... And perhaps I may be\nsaying fundamentally the same thing, although more confusedly, that my\nimaginary adversaries say, only more clearly, more definitely, and more\nrationally, those adversaries whom I imagine in order that I may have\nsomeone to fight. I do not know, I do not know.... But what they say\nfreezes me and sounds to me as though it proceeded from emptiness of\nfeeling.\n\nAnd, returning to our former question, Is virtue knowledge?--Is\nknowledge virtue? For they are two distinct questions. Virtue may be a\nscience, the science of acting rightly, without every other science\nbeing therefore virtue. The virtue of Machiavelli is a science, and it\ncannot be said that his _virtu_ is always moral virtue It is well known,\nmoreover, that the cleverest and the most learned men are not the best.\n\nNo, no, no! Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to\ndiscourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics\nhow to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be\nhypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be the pedantry of logic, or of\nesthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.\n\nReason perhaps teaches certain bourgeois virtues, but it does not make\neither heroes or saints. Perhaps the saint is he who does good not for\ngood's sake, but for God's sake, for the sake of eternalization.\n\nPerhaps, on the other hand, culture, or as I should say Culture--oh,\nthis culture!--which is primarily the work of philosophers and men of\nscience, is a thing which neither heroes nor saints have had any share\nin the making of. For saints have concerned themselves very little with\nthe progress of human culture; they have concerned themselves rather\nwith the salvation of the individual souls of those amongst whom they\nlived. Of what account in the history of human culture is our San Juan\nde la Cruz, for example--that fiery little monk, as culture, in perhaps\nsomewhat uncultured phrase, has called him--compared with Descartes?\n\nAll those saints, burning with religious charity towards their\nneighbours, hungering for their own and others' eternalization, who went\nabout burning hearts, inquisitors, it may be--what have all those saints\ndone for the progress of the science of ethics? Did any of them discover\nthe categorical imperative, like the old bachelor of K\u00f6nigsberg, who, if\nhe was not a saint, deserved to be one?\n\nThe son of a famous professor of ethics, one who scarcely ever opened\nhis lips without mentioning the categorical imperative, was lamenting to\nme one day the fact that he lived in a desolating dryness of spirit, in\na state of inward emptiness. And I was constrained to answer him thus:\n\"My friend, your father had a subterranean river flowing through his\nspirit, a fresh current fed by the beliefs of his early childhood, by\nhopes in the beyond; and while he thought that he was nourishing his\nsoul with this categorical imperative or something of that sort, he was\nin reality nourishing it with those waters which had their spring in his\nchildish days. And it may be that to you he has given the flower of his\nspirit, his rational doctrines of ethics, but not the root, not the\nsubterranean source, not the irrational substratum.\"\n\nHow was it that Krausism took root here in Spain, while Kantism and\nHegelianism did not, although the two latter systems are much more\nprofound, morally and philosophically, than the first? Because in\ntransplanting the first, its roots were transplanted with it. The\nphilosophical thought of a people or a period is, as it were, the\nflower, the thing that is external and above ground; but this flower, or\nfruit if you prefer it, draws its sap from the root of the plant, and\nthis root, which is in and under the ground, is the religious sense. The\nphilosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the mental\nevolution of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feeling\nof Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practical\npart of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples who\nhave not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhaps\nwere incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and we\nSpaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some roots\nhere--more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed--it is\nbecause Krause had roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has\ndemonstrated in his _Geschichte des Pietismus_, has specifically\nCatholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the\npersistence, of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant\nrationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spain\nbecame followers of Krause.\n\nAnd since we Spaniards are Catholic--whether we know it or not, and\nwhether we like it or not--and although some of us may claim to be\nrationalists or atheists, perhaps the greatest service we can render to\nthe cause of culture, and of what is of more value than culture,\nreligiousness--if indeed they are not the same thing--is in endeavouring\nto formulate clearly to ourselves this subconscious, social, or popular\nCatholicism of ours. And that is what I have attempted to do in this\nwork.\n\nWhat I call the tragic sense of life in men and peoples is at any rate\nour tragic sense of life, that of Spaniards and the Spanish people, as\nit is reflected in my consciousness, which is a Spanish consciousness,\nmade in Spain. And this tragic sense of life is essentially the Catholic\nsense of it, for Catholicism, and above all popular Catholicism, is\ntragic. The people abhors comedy. When Pilate--the type of the refined\ngentleman, the superior person, the esthete, the rationalist if you\nlike--proposes to give the people comedy and mockingly presents Christ\nto them, saying, \"Behold the man!\" the people mutinies and shouts\n\"Crucify him! Crucify him!\" The people does not want comedy but tragedy.\nAnd that which Dante, the great Catholic, called the Divine Comedy, is\nthe most tragical tragedy that has ever been written.\n\nAnd as I have endeavoured in these essays to exhibit the soul of a\nSpaniard, and therewithal the Spanish soul, I have curtailed the number\nof quotations from Spanish writers, while scattering with perhaps too\nlavish a hand those from the writers of other countries. For all human\nsouls are brother-souls.\n\nAnd there is one figure, a comically tragic figure, a figure in which\nis revealed all that is profoundly tragic in the human comedy, the\nfigure of Our Lord Don Quixote, the Spanish Christ, who resumes and\nincludes in himself the immortal soul of my people. Perhaps the passion\nand death of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is the passion and\ndeath of the Spanish people, its death and resurrection. And there is a\nQuixotesque philosophy and even a Quixotesque metaphysic, there is a\nQuixotesque logic, and also a Quixotesque ethic and a Quixotesque\nreligious sense--the religious sense of Spanish Catholicism. This is the\nphilosophy, this is the logic, this is the ethic, this is the religious\nsense, that I have endeavoured to outline, to suggest rather than to\ndevelop, in this work. To develop it rationally, no; the Quixotesque\nmadness does not submit to scientific logic.\n\nAnd now, before concluding and bidding my readers farewell, it remains\nfor me to speak of the r\u00f4le that is reserved for Don Quixote in the\nmodern European tragi-comedy.\n\nLet us see, in the next and last essay, what this may be.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[54] Act II., Scene 4: \"I am dreaming and I wish to act rightly, for\ngood deeds are not lost, though they be wrought in dreams.\"\n\n[55] Act III., Scene 10: \"Let us aim at the eternal, the glory that does\nnot wane, where bliss slumbers not and where greatness does not repose.\"\n\n[56] \"Se _les_ muera,\" y no s\u00f3lo \"se muera.\"\n\n[57] _Trabalhos de Jesus_, part i.\n\n[58] De Musset.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\nDON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY\n\n\"A voice crying in the wilderness!\"--ISA. xl. 3.\n\n\nNeed is that I bring to a conclusion, for the present at any rate, these\nessays that threaten to become like a tale that has no ending. They have\ngone straight from my hands to the press in the form of a kind of\nimprovization upon notes collected during a number of years, and in\nwriting each essay I have not had before me any of those that preceded\nit. And thus they will go forth full of inward contradictions--apparent\ncontradictions, at any rate--like life and like me myself.\n\nMy sin, if any, has been that I have embellished them to excess with\nforeign quotations, many of which will appear to have been dragged in\nwith a certain degree of violence. But I will explain this another time.\n\nA few years after Our Lord Don Quixote had journeyed through Spain,\nJacob B\u00f6hme declared in his _Aurora_ (chap xi., \u00a7 142) that he did not\nwrite a story or history related to him by others, but that he himself\nhad had to stand in the battle, which he found to be full of heavy\nstrivings, and wherein he was often struck down to the ground like all\nother men; and a little further on (\u00a7 152) he adds: \"Although I must\nbecome a spectacle of scorn to the world and the devil, yet my hope is\nin God concerning the life to come; in Him will I venture to hazard it\nand not resist or strive against the Spirit. Amen.\" And like this\nQuixote of the German intellectual world, neither will I resist the\nSpirit.\n\nAnd therefore I cry with the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and\nI send forth my cry from this University of Salamanca, a University that\narrogantly styled itself _omnium scientiarum princeps_, and which\nCarlyle called a stronghold of ignorance and which a French man of\nletters recently called a phantom University; I send it forth from this\nSpain--\"the land of dreams that become realities, the rampart of Europe,\nthe home of the knightly ideal,\" to quote from a letter which the\nAmerican poet Archer M. Huntington sent me the other day--from this\nSpain which was the head and front of the Counter-Reformation in the\nsixteenth century. And well they repay her for it!\n\nIn the fourth of these essays I spoke of the essence of Catholicism. And\nthe chief factors in _de-essentializing_ it--that is, in\nde-Catholicizing Europe--have been the Renaissance, the Reformation, and\nthe Revolution, which for the ideal of an eternal, ultra-terrestrial\nlife, have substituted the ideal of progress, of reason, of science, or,\nrather, of Science with the capital letter. And last of all, the\ndominant ideal of to-day, comes Culture.\n\nAnd in the second half of the nineteenth century, an age essentially\nunphilosophical and technical, dominated by a myopic specialism and by\nhistorical materialism, this ideal took a practical form, not so much in\nthe popularization as in the vulgarization of science--or, rather, of\npseudo-science--venting itself in a flood of cheap, popular, and\npropagandist literature. Science sought to popularize itself as if it\nwere its function to come down to the people and subserve their\npassions, and not the duty of the people to rise to science and through\nscience to rise to higher heights, to new and profounder aspirations.\n\nAll this led Bruneti\u00e8re to proclaim the bankruptcy of science, and this\nscience--if you like to call it science--did in effect become bankrupt.\nAnd as it failed to satisfy, men continued their quest for happiness,\nbut without finding it, either in wealth, or in knowledge, or in power,\nor in pleasure, or in resignation, or in a good conscience, or in\nculture. And the result was pessimism.\n\nNeither did the gospel of progress satisfy. What end did progress serve?\nMan would not accommodate himself to rationalism; the _Kulturkampf_ did\nnot suffice him; he sought to give a final finality to life, and what I\ncall the final finality is the real _hont\u00f4s hon_. And the famous _maladie\ndu si\u00e8cle_, which announced itself in Rousseau and was exhibited more\nplainly in S\u00e9nancour's _Obermann_ than in any other character, neither\nwas nor is anything else but the loss of faith in the immortality of the\nsoul, in the human finality of the Universe.\n\nThe truest symbol of it is to be found in a creation of fiction, Dr.\nFaustus.\n\nThis immortal Dr. Faustus, the product of the Renaissance and the\nReformation, first comes into our ken at the beginning of the\nseventeenth century, when in 1604 he is introduced to us by Christopher\nMarlowe. This is the same character that Goethe was to rediscover two\ncenturies later, although in certain respects the earlier Faust was the\nfresher and more spontaneous. And side by side with him Mephistopheles\nappears, of whom Faust asks: \"What good will my soul do thy lord?\"\n\"Enlarge his kingdom,\" Mephistopheles replies. \"Is that the reason why\nhe tempts us thus?\" the Doctor asks again, and the evil spirit answers:\n\"_Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris_,\" which, mistranslated into\nRomance, is the equivalent of our proverb--\"The misfortune of many is\nthe consolation of fools.\" \"Where we are is hell, and where hell is\nthere must we ever be,\" Mephistopheles continues, to which Faust answers\nthat he thinks hell's a fable and asks him who made the world. And\nfinally this tragic Doctor, tortured with our torture, meets Helen, who,\nalthough no doubt Marlowe never suspected it, is none other than\nrenascent Culture. And in Marlowe's _Faust_ there is a scene that is\nworth the whole of the second part of the _Faust_ of Goethe. Faust says\nto Helen: \"Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss\"--and he kisses\nher--\n\n    Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!\n    Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.\n    Here will I dwell, for Helen is in these lips,\n    And all is dross that is not Helena.\n\nGive me my soul again!--the cry of Faust, the Doctor, when, after having\nkissed Helen, he is about to be lost eternally. For the primitive Faust\nhas no ingenuous Margaret to save him. This idea of his salvation was\nthe invention of Goethe. And is there not a Faust whom we all know, our\nown Faust? This Faust has studied Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Medicine,\nand even Theology, only to find that we can know nothing, and he has\nsought escape in the open country (_hinaus ins weite Land_) and has\nencountered Mephistopheles, the embodiment of that force which, ever\nwilling evil, ever achieves good in its own despite. This Faust has been\nled by Mephistopheles to the arms of Margaret, child of the\nsimple-hearted people, she whom Faust, the overwise, had lost. And\nthanks to her--for she gave herself to him--this Faust is saved,\nredeemed by the people that believes with a simple faith. But there was\na second part, for that Faust was the anecdotical Faust and not the\ncategorical Faust of Goethe, and he gave himself again to Culture, to\nHelen, and begot Euphorion upon her, and everything ends among mystical\nchoruses with the discovery of the eternal feminine. Poor Euphorion!\n\nAnd this Helen is the spouse of the fair Menelaus, the Helen whom Paris\nbore away, who was the cause of the war of Troy, and of whom the ancient\nTrojans said that no one should be incensed because men fought for a\nwoman who bore so terrible a likeness to the immortal gods. But I\nrather think that Faust's Helen was that other Helen who accompanied\nSimon Magus, and whom he declared to be the divine wisdom. And Faust can\nsay to her: Give me my soul again!\n\nFor Helen with her kisses takes away our soul. And what we long for and\nhave need of is soul--soul of bulk and substance.\n\nBut the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution came, bringing\nHelen to us, or, rather, urged on by Helen, and now they talk to us\nabout Culture and Europe.\n\nEurope! This idea of Europe, primarily and immediately of geographical\nsignificance, has been converted for us by some magical process into a\nkind of metaphysical category. Who can say to-day--in Spain, at any\nrate--what Europe is? I only know that it is a shibboleth (_vide_ my\n_Tres Ensayos_). And when I proceed to examine what it is that our\nEuropeanizers call Europe, it sometimes seems to me that much of its\nperiphery remains outside of it--Spain, of course, and also England,\nItaly, Scandinavia, Russia--and hence it is reduced to the central\nportion, Franco-Germany, with its annexes and dependencies.\n\nAll this is the consequence, I repeat, of the Renaissance and the\nReformation, which, although apparently they lived in a state of\ninternecine war, were twin-brothers. The Italians of the Renaissance\nwere all of them Socinians; the humanists, with Erasmus at their head,\nregarded Luther, the German monk, as a barbarian, who derived his\ndriving force from the cloister, as did Bruno and Campanella. But this\nbarbarian was their twin-brother, and though their antagonist he was\nalso the antagonist of the common enemy. All this, I say, is due to the\nRenaissance and the Reformation, and to what was the offspring of these\ntwo, the Revolution, and to them we owe also a new Inquisition, that of\nscience or culture, which turns against those who refuse to submit to\nits orthodoxy the weapons of ridicule and contempt.\n\nWhen Galileo sent his treatise on the earth's motion to the Grand Duke\nof Tuscany, he told him that it was meet that that which the higher\nauthorities had determined should be believed and obeyed, and that he\nconsidered his treatise \"as poetry or as a dream, and as such I desire\nyour highness to receive it.\" And at other times he calls it a \"chimera\"\nor a \"mathematical caprice.\" And in the same way in these essays, for\nfear also--why not confess it?--of the Inquisition, of the modern, the\nscientific, Inquisition, I offer as a poetry, dream, chimera, mystical\ncaprice, that which springs from what is deepest in me. And I say with\nGalileo, _Eppur si muove!_ But is it only because of this fear? Ah, no!\nfor there is another, more tragic Inquisition, and that is the\nInquisition which the modern man, the man of culture, the European--and\nsuch am I, whether I will or not--carries within him. There is a more\nterrible ridicule, and that is the ridicule with which a man\ncontemplates his own self. It is my reason that laughs at my faith and\ndespises it.\n\nAnd it is here that I must betake me to my Lord Don Quixote in order\nthat I may learn of him how to confront ridicule and overcome it, and a\nridicule which perhaps--who knows?--he never knew.\n\nYes, yes--how shall my reason not smile at these dilettantesque,\nwould-be mystical, pseudo-philosophical interpretations, in which there\nis anything rather than patient study and--shall I say\nscientific?--objectivity and method? And nevertheless ... _eppur si\nmuove!_\n\n_Eppur si muove!_ And I take refuge in dilettantism, in what a pedant\nwould call _demi-mondaine_ philosophy, as a shelter against the pedantry\nof specialists, against the philosophy of the professional philosophers.\nAnd who knows?... Progress usually comes from the barbarian, and there\nis nothing more stagnant than the philosophy of the philosophers and\nthe theology of the theologians.\n\nLet them talk to us of Europe! The civilization of Thibet is parallel\nwith ours, and men who disappear like ourselves have lived and are\nliving by it. And over all civilizations there hovers the shadow of\nEcclesiastes, with his admonition, \"How dieth the wise man?--as the\nfool\" (ii. 16).\n\nAmong the people of my country there is an admirable reply to the\ncustomary interrogation, \"How are you?\"[59] and it is \"Living.\" And that\nis the truth--we are living, and living as much as all the rest. What\ncan a man ask for more? And who does not recollect the verse?--\n\n    _Coda vez que considero\n    que me tengo de morir,\n    tiendo la capa en el suelo\n    y no me harto de dormir._[60]\n\nBut no, not sleeping, but dreaming--dreaming life, since life is a\ndream.\n\nAmong us Spaniards another phrase has very rapidly passed into current\nusage, the expression \"It's a question of passing the time,\" or \"killing\nthe time.\" And, in fact, we make time in order to kill it. But there is\nsomething that has always preoccupied us as much as or more than passing\nthe time--a formula which denotes an esthetical attitude--and that is,\ngaining eternity, which is the formula of the religious attitude. The\ntruth is, we leap from the esthetic and the economic to the religious,\npassing over the logical and the ethical; we jump from art to religion.\n\nOne of our younger novelists, Ram\u00f3n P\u00e9rez de Ayala, in his recent novel,\n_La Pata de la Raposa_, has told us that the idea of death is the trap,\nand spirit the fox or the wary virtue with which to circumvent the\nambushes set by fatality, and he continues: \"Caught in the trap, weak\nmen and weak peoples lie prone on the ground ...; to robust spirits and\nstrong peoples the rude shock of danger gives clear-sightedness; they\nquickly penetrate into the heart of the immeasurable beauty of life, and\nrenouncing for ever their original hastiness and folly, emerge from the\ntrap with muscles taut for action and with the soul's vigour, power, and\nefficiency increased a hundredfold.\" But let us see; weak men ... weak\npeoples ... robust spirits ... strong peoples ... what does all this\nmean? I do not know. What I think I know is that some individuals and\npeoples have not yet really thought about death and immortality, have\nnot felt them, and that others have ceased to think about them, or\nrather ceased to feel them. And the fact that they have never passed\nthrough the religious period is not, I think, a matter for either men or\npeoples to boast about.\n\nThe immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and\nthere are, indeed, some who resign themselves to it and accept it as it\nis, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the\n\"trap.\" But it has been said by Calder\u00f3n that \"to seek to persuade a man\nthat the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not\nconsole him for them, but is another misfortune in addition.\"[61] And,\nfurthermore, \"only the heart can speak to the heart,\" as Fray Diego de\nEstella said (_Vanidad del Mundo_, cap. xxi.).\n\nA short time ago a reply that I made to those who reproached us\nSpaniards for our scientific incapacity appeared to scandalize some\npeople. After having remarked that the electric light and the steam\nengine function here in Spain just as well as in the countries where\nthey were invented, and that we make use of logarithms as much as they\ndo in the country where the idea of them was first conceived, I\nexclaimed, \"Let others invent!\"--a paradoxical expression which I do not\nretract. We Spaniards ought to appropriate to ourselves some of those\nsage counsels which Count Joseph de Maistre gave to the Russians, a\npeople not unlike ourselves. In his admirable letters to Count\nRasoumowski on public education in Russia, he said that a nation should\nnot think the worse of itself because it was not made for science; that\nthe Romans had no understanding of the arts, neither did they possess a\nmathematician, which, however, did not prevent them from playing their\npart in the world; and in particular we should take to heart everything\nthat he said about that crowd of arrogant sciolists who idolize the\ntastes, the fashions, and the languages of foreign countries, and are\never ready to pull down whatever they despise--and they despise\neverything.\n\nWe have not the scientific spirit? And what of that, if we have some\nother spirit? And who can tell if the spirit that we have is or is not\ncompatible with the scientific spirit?\n\nBut in saying \"Let others invent!\" I did not mean to imply that we must\nbe content with playing a passive r\u00f4le. No. For them their science, by\nwhich we shall profit; for us, our own work. It is not enough to be on\nthe defensive, we must attack.\n\nBut we must attack wisely and cautiously. Reason must be our weapon. It\nis the weapon even of the fool. Our sublime fool and our exemplar, Don\nQuixote, after he had destroyed with two strokes of his sword that\npasteboard visor \"which he had fitted to his head-piece, made it anew,\nplacing certain iron bars within it, in such a manner that he rested\nsatisfied with its solidity, and without wishing to make a second trial\nof it, he deputed and held it in estimation of a most excellent\nvisor.\"[62] And with the pasteboard visor on his head he made himself\nimmortal--that is to say, he made himself ridiculous. For it was by\nmaking himself ridiculous that Don Quixote achieved his immortality.\n\nAnd there are so many ways of making ourselves ridiculous I ... Cournot\nsaid _(Trait\u00e9 de l'encha\u00eenement des id\u00e9es fondamentales_, etc., \u00a7 510):\n\"It is best not to speak to either princes or peoples of the\nprobabilities of death; princes will punish this temerity with disgrace;\nthe public will revenge itself with ridicule.\" True, and therefore it is\nsaid that we must live as the age lives. _Corrumpere et corrumpi s\u00e6culum\nvocatur_ (Tacitus: _Germania_ 19).\n\nIt is necessary to know how to make ourselves ridiculous, and not only\nto others but to ourselves. And more than ever to-day, when there is so\nmuch chatter about our backwardness compared with other civilized\npeoples, to-day when a parcel of shallow-brained critics say that we\nhave had no science, no art, no philosophy, no Renaissance, (of this we\nhad perhaps too much), no anything, these same critics being ignorant of\nour real history, a history that remains yet to be written, the first\ntask being to undo the web of calumniation and protest that has been\nwoven around it.\n\nCarducci, the author of the phrase about the _contorcimenti\ndell'affannosa grandiosit\u00e1 spagnola_, has written (in _Mosche Cochiere_)\nthat \"even Spain, which never attained the hegemony of the world of\nthought, had her Cervantes.\" But was Cervantes a solitary and isolated\nphenomenon, without roots, without ancestry, without a foundation? That\nan Italian rationalist, remembering that it was Spain that reacted\nagainst the Renaissance in his country, should say that Spain _non ebbe\negemonia mai di pensiero_ is, however, readily comprehended. Was there\nno importance, was there nothing akin to cultural hegemony, in the\nCounter-Reformation, of which Spain was the champion, and which in point\nof fact began with the sack of Rome by the Spaniards, a providential\nchastisement of the city of the pagan popes of the pagan Renaissance?\nApart from the question as to whether the Counter-Reformation was good\nor bad, was there nothing akin to hegemony in Loyola or the Council of\nTrent? Previous to this Council, Italy witnessed a nefarious and\nunnatural union between Christianity and Paganism, or rather, between\nimmortalism and mortalism, a union to which even some of the Popes\nthemselves consented in their souls; theological error was philosophical\ntruth, and all difficulties were solved by the accommodating formula\n_salva fide_. But it was otherwise after the Council; after the Council\ncame the open and avowed struggle between reason and faith, science and\nreligion. And does not the fact that this change was brought about,\nthanks principally to Spanish obstinacy, point to something akin to\nhegemony?\n\nWithout the Counter-Reformation, would the Reformation have followed the\ncourse that it did actually follow? Without the Counter-Reformation\nmight not the Reformation, deprived of the support of pietism, have\nperished in the gross rationalism of the _Aufkl\u00e4rung_, of the age of\nEnlightenment? Would nothing have been changed had there been no Charles\nI., no Philip II., our great Philip?\n\nA negative achievement, it will be said. But what is that? What is\nnegative? what is positive? At what point in time--a line always\ncontinuing in the same direction, from the past to the future--does the\nzero occur which denotes the boundary between the positive and the\nnegative? Spain, which is said to be the land of knights and rogues--and\nall of them rogues--has been the country most slandered by history\nprecisely because it championed the Counter-Reformation. And because\nits arrogance has prevented it from stepping down into the public\nforum, into the world's vanity fair, and publishing its own\njustification.\n\nLet us leave on one side Spain's eight centuries of warfare against the\nMoors, during which she defended Europe from Mohammedanism, her work of\ninternal unification, her discovery of America and the Indies--for this\nwas the achievement of Spain and Portugal, and not of Columbus and Vasco\nda Gama--let us leave all this, and more than this, on one side, and it\nis not a little thing. Is it not a cultural achievement to have created\na score of nations, reserving nothing for herself, and to have begotten,\nas the Conquistadores did, free men on poor Indian slaves? Apart from\nall this, does our mysticism count for nothing in the world of thought?\nPerhaps the peoples whose souls Helen will ravish away with her kisses\nmay some day have to return to this mysticism to find their souls again.\n\nBut, as everybody knows, Culture is composed of ideas and only of ideas,\nand man is only Culture's instrument. Man for the idea, and not the idea\nfor man; the substance for the shadow. The end of man is to create\nscience, to catalogue the Universe, so that it may be handed back to God\nin order, as I wrote years ago in my novel, _Amor y Pedagogia_. Man,\napparently, is not even an idea. And at the end of all, the human race\nwill fall exhausted at the foot of a pile of libraries--whole woods\nrased to the ground to provide the paper that is stored away in\nthem--museums, machines, factories, laboratories ... in order to\nbequeath them--to whom? For God will surely not accept them.\n\nThat horrible regenerationist literature, almost all of it an imposture,\nwhich the loss of our last American colonies provoked, led us into the\npedantry of extolling persevering and silent effort--and this with great\nvociferation, vociferating silence--of extolling prudence, exactitude,\nmoderation, spiritual fortitude, synteresis, equanimity, the social\nvirtues, and the chiefest advocates of them were those of us who lacked\nthem most. Almost all of us Spaniards fell into this ridiculous mode of\nliterature, some more and some less. And so it befell that that\narch-Spaniard Joaqu\u00edn Costa, one of the least European spirits we ever\nhad, invented his famous saying that we must Europeanize Spain, and,\nwhile proclaiming that we must lock up the sepulchre of the Cid with a\nsevenfold lock, Cid-like urged us to--conquer Africa! And I myself\nuttered the cry, \"Down with Don Quixote!\" and from this blasphemy, which\nmeant the very opposite of what it said--such was the fashion of the\nhour--sprang my _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_ and my cult of Quixotism\nas the national religion.\n\nI wrote that book in order to rethink _Don Quixote_ in opposition to the\nCervantists and erudite persons, in order to make a living work of what\nwas and still is for the majority a dead letter. What does it matter to\nme what Cervantes intended or did not intend to put into it and what he\nactually did put into it? What is living in it is what I myself discover\nin it, whether Cervantes put it there or not, what I myself put into and\nunder and over it, and what we all put into it. I wanted to hunt down\nour philosophy in it.\n\nFor the conviction continually grows upon me that our philosophy, the\nSpanish philosophy, is liquescent and diffused in our literature, in our\nlife, in our action, in our mysticism, above all, and not in\nphilosophical systems. It is concrete. And is there not perhaps as much\nphilosophy or more in Goethe, for example, as in Hegel? The poetry of\nJorge Manrique, the Romancero, _Don Quijote_, _La Vida es Sue\u00f1o_, the\n_Subida al Monte Carmelo_, imply an intuition of the world and a concept\nof life (_Weltanschauung und Lebensansicht_). And it was difficult for\nthis philosophy of ours to formulate itself in the second half of the\nnineteenth century, a period that was aphilosophical, positivist,\ntechnicist, devoted to pure history and the natural sciences, a period\nessentially materialist and pessimist.\n\nOur language itself, like every cultured language, contains within\nitself an implicit philosophy.\n\nA language, in effect, is a potential philosophy. Platonism is the Greek\nlanguage which discourses in Plato, unfolding its secular metaphors;\nscholasticism is the philosophy of the dead Latin of the Middle Ages\nwrestling with the popular tongues; the French language discourses in\nDescartes, the German in Kant and in Hegel, and the English in Hume and\nin Stuart Mill. For the truth is that the logical starting-point of all\nphilosophical speculation is not the I, neither is it representation\n(_Vorstellung_), nor the world as it presents itself immediately to the\nsenses; but it is mediate or historical representation, humanly\nelaborated and such as it is given to us principally in the language by\nmeans of which we know the world; it is not psychical but spiritual\nrepresentation. When we think, we are obliged to set out, whether we\nknow it not and whether we will or not, from what has been thought by\nothers who came before us and who environ us. Thought is an inheritance.\nKant thought in German, and into German he translated Hume and Rousseau,\nwho thought in English and French respectively. And did not Spinoza\nthink in Judeo-Portuguese, obstructed by and contending with Dutch?\n\nThought rests upon prejudgements, and prejudgements pass into language.\nTo language Bacon rightly ascribed not a few of the errors of the _idola\nfori_. But is it possible to philosophize in pure algebra or even in\nEsperanto? In order to see the result of such an attempt one has only to\nread the work of Avenarius on the criticism of pure experience (_reine\nErfahrung_), of this prehuman or inhuman experience. And even Avenarius,\nwho was obliged to invent a language, invented one that was based upon\nthe Latin tradition, with roots which carry in their metaphorical\nimplications a content of impure experience, of human social experience.\n\nAll philosophy is, therefore, at bottom philology. And philology, with\nits great and fruitful law of analogical formations, opens wide the door\nto chance, to the irrational, to the absolutely incommensurable. History\nis not mathematics, neither is philosophy. And how many philosophical\nideas are not strictly owing to something akin to rhyme, to the\nnecessity of rightly placing a consonant! In Kant himself there is a\ngreat deal of this, of esthetic symmetry, rhyme.\n\nRepresentation is, therefore, like language, like reason itself--which\nis simply internal language--a social and racial product, and race, the\nblood of the spirit, is language, as Oliver Wendell Holmes has said, and\nas I have often repeated.\n\nIt was in Athens and with Socrates that our Western philosophy first\nbecame mature, conscious of itself, and it arrived at this consciousness\nby means of the dialogue, of social conversation. And it is profoundly\nsignificant that the doctrine of innate ideas, of the objective and\nnormative value of ideas, of what Scholasticism afterwards knew as\nRealism, should have formulated itself in dialogues. And these ideas,\nwhich constitute reality, are names, as Nominalism showed. Not that they\nmay not be more than names (_flatus vocis_), but that they are nothing\nless than names. Language is that which gives us reality, and not as a\nmere vehicle of reality, but as its true flesh, of which all the rest,\ndumb or inarticulate representation, is merely the skeleton. And thus\nlogic operates upon esthetics, the concept upon the expression, upon the\nword, and not upon the brute perception.\n\nAnd this is true even in the matter of love. Love does not discover that\nit is love until it speaks, until it says, I love thee! In Stendhal's\nnovel, _La Chartreuse de Parme_, it is with a very profound intuition\nthat Count Mosca, furious with jealousy because of the love which he\nbelieves unites the Duchess of Sanseverina with his nephew Fabrice, is\nmade to say, \"I must be calm; if my manner is violent the duchess,\nsimply because her vanity is piqued, is capable of following Belgirate,\nand then, during the journey, chance may lead to a word which will give\na name to the feelings they bear towards each other, and thereupon in a\nmoment all the consequences will follow.\"\n\nEven so--all things were made by the word, and the word was in the\nbeginning.\n\nThought, reason--that is, living language--is an inheritance, and the\nsolitary thinker of Aben Tofail, the Arab philosopher of Guadix, is as\nabsurd as the ego of Descartes. The real and concrete truth, not the\nmethodical and ideal, is: _homo sum, ergo cogito_. To feel oneself a man\nis more immediate than to think. But, on the other hand, History, the\nprocess of culture, finds its perfection and complete effectivity only\nin the individual; the end of History and Humanity is man, each man,\neach individual. _Homo sum, ergo cogito; cogito ut sim Michael de\nUnamuno_. The individual is the end of the Universe.\n\nAnd we Spaniards feel this very strongly, that the individual is the end\nof the Universe. The introspective individuality of the Spaniard was\npointed out by Martin A.S. Hume in a passage in _The Spanish\nPeople_,[63] upon which I commented in an essay published in _La Espa\u00f1a\nModerna_.[64]\n\nAnd it is perhaps this same introspective individualism which has not\npermitted the growth on Spanish soil of strictly philosophical--or,\nrather, metaphysical--systems. And this in spite of Su\u00e1rez, whose formal\nsubtilties do not merit the name of philosophy.\n\nOur metaphysics, if we can be said to possess such a thing, has been\nmetanthropics, and our metaphysicians have been philologists--or,\nrather, humanists--in the most comprehensive sense of the term.\n\nMen\u00e9ndez de Pelayo, as Benedetto Croce very truly said (_Estetica_,\nbibliographical appendix), was inclined towards metaphysical idealism,\nbut he appeared to wish to take something from other systems, even from\nempirical theories. For this reason Croce considers that his work\n(referring to his _Historia de las ideas est\u00e9ticas de Espa\u00f1a_) suffers\nfrom a certain uncertainty, from the theoretical point of view of its\nauthor, Men\u00e9ndez de Pelayo, which was that of a perfervid Spanish\nhumanist, who, not wishing to disown the Renaissance, invented what he\ncalled Vivism, the philosophy of Luis Vives, and perhaps for no other\nreason than because he himself, like Vives, was an eclectic Spaniard of\nthe Renaissance. And it is true that Men\u00e9ndez de Pelayo, whose\nphilosophy is certainly all uncertainty, educated in Barcelona in the\ntimidities of the Scottish philosophy as it had been imported into the\nCatalan spirit--that creeping philosophy of common sense, which was\nanxious not to compromise itself and yet was all compromise, and which\nis so well exemplified in Balmes--always shunned all strenuous inward\ncombat and formed his consciousness upon compromises.\n\nAngel Ganivet, a man all divination and instinct, was more happily\ninspired, in my opinion, when he proclaimed that the Spanish philosophy\nwas that of Seneca, the pagan Stoic of Cordoba, whom not a few\nChristians regarded as one of themselves, a philosophy lacking in\noriginality of thought but speaking with great dignity of tone and\naccent. His accent was a Spanish, Latino-African accent, not Hellenic,\nand there are echoes of him in Tertullian--Spanish, too, at heart--who\nbelieved in the corporal and substantial nature of God and the soul, and\nwho was a kind of Don Quixote in the world of Christian thought in the\nsecond century.\n\nBut perhaps we must look for the hero of Spanish thought, not in any\nactual flesh-and-bone philosopher, but in a creation of fiction, a man\nof action, who is more real than all the philosophers--Don Quixote.\nThere is undoubtedly a philosophical Quixotism, but there is also a\nQuixotic philosophy. May it not perhaps be that the philosophy of the\nConquistadores, of the Counter-Reformers, of Loyola, and above all, in\nthe order of abstract but deeply felt thought, that of our mystics, was,\nin its essence, none other than this? What was the mysticism of St. John\nof the Cross but a knight-errantry of the heart in the divine warfare?\n\nAnd the philosophy of Don Quixote cannot strictly be called idealism; he\ndid not fight for ideas. It was of the spiritual order; he fought for\nthe spirit.\n\nImagine Don Quixote turning his heart to religious speculation--as he\nhimself once dreamed of doing when he met those images in bas-relief\nwhich certain peasants were carrying to set up in the retablo of their\nvillage church[65]--imagine Don Quixote given up to meditation upon\neternal truths, and see him ascending Mount Carmel in the middle of the\ndark night of the soul, to watch from its summit the rising of that sun\nwhich never sets, and, like the eagle that was St. John's companion in\nthe isle of Patmos, to gaze upon it face to face and scrutinize its\nspots. He leaves to Athena's owl--the goddess with the glaucous, or\nowl-like, eyes, who sees in the dark but who is dazzled by the light of\nnoon--he leaves to the owl that accompanied Athena in Olympus the task\nof searching with keen eyes in the shadows for the prey wherewith to\nfeed its young.\n\nAnd the speculative or meditative Quixotism is, like the practical\nQuixotism, madness, a daughter-madness to the madness of the Cross. And\ntherefore it is despised by the reason. At bottom, philosophy abhors\nChristianity, and well did the gentle Marcus Aurelius prove it.\n\nThe tragedy of Christ, the divine tragedy, is the tragedy of the Cross.\nPilate, the sceptic, the man of culture, by making a mockery of it,\nsought to convert it into a comedy; he conceived the farcical idea of\nthe king with the reed sceptre and crown of thorns, and cried \"Behold\nthe man!\" But the people, more human than he, the people that thirsts\nfor tragedy, shouted, \"Crucify him! crucify him!\" And the human, the\nintra-human, tragedy is the tragedy of Don Quixote, whose face was\ndaubed with soap in order that he might make sport for the servants of\nthe dukes and for the dukes themselves, as servile as their servants.\n\"Behold the madman!\" they would have said. And the comic, the\nirrational, tragedy is the tragedy of suffering caused by ridicule and\ncontempt.\n\nThe greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people,\ncan attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to\nmake oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.\n\nI have already spoken of the forceful sonnets of that tragic Portuguese,\nAntero de Quental, who died by his own hand. Feeling acutely for the\nplight of his country on the occasion of the British ultimatum in 1890,\nhe wrote as follows:[66] \"An English statesman of the last century, who\nwas also undoubtedly a perspicacious observer and a philosopher, Horace\nWalpole, said that for those who feel, life is a tragedy, and a comedy\nfor those who think. Very well, then, if we are destined to end\ntragically, we Portuguese, we who _feel_, we would far rather prefer\nthis terrible, but noble, destiny, to that which is reserved, and\nperhaps at no very remote future date, for England, the country that\n_thinks_ and _calculates_, whose destiny it is to finish miserably and\ncomically.\" We may leave on one side the assertion that the English are\na thinking and calculating people, implying thereby their lack of\nfeeling, the injustice of which is explained by the occasion which\nprovoked it, and also the assertion that the Portuguese feel, implying\nthat they do not think or calculate--for we twin-brothers of the\nAtlantic seaboard have always been distinguished by a certain pedantry\nof feeling; but there remains a basis of truth underlying this terrible\nidea--namely, that some peoples, those who put thought above feeling, I\nshould say reason above faith, die comically, while those die tragically\nwho put faith above reason. For the mockers are those who die comically,\nand God laughs at their comic ending, while the nobler part, the part of\ntragedy, is theirs who endured the mockery.\n\nThe mockery that underlies the career of Don Quixote is what we must\nendeavour to discover.\n\nAnd shall we be told yet again that there has never been any Spanish\nphilosophy in the technical sense of the word? I will answer by asking,\nWhat is this sense? What does philosophy mean? Windelband, the historian\nof philosophy, in his essay on the meaning of philosophy (_Was ist\nPhilosophie_? in the first volume of his _Pr\u00e4ludien_) tells us that \"the\nhistory of the word 'philosophy' is the history of the cultural\nsignificance of science.\" He continues: \"When scientific thought attains\nan independent existence as a desire for knowledge for the sake of\nknowledge, it takes the name of philosophy; when subsequently knowledge\nas a whole divides into its various branches, philosophy is the general\nknowledge of the world that embraces all other knowledge. As soon as\nscientific thought stoops again to becoming a means to ethics or\nreligious contemplation, philosophy is transformed into an art of life\nor into a formulation of religious beliefs. And when afterwards the\nscientific life regains its liberty, philosophy acquires once again its\ncharacter as an independent knowledge of the world, and in so far as it\nabandons the attempt to solve this problem, it is changed into a theory\nof knowledge itself.\" Here you have a brief recapitulation of the\nhistory of philosophy from Thales to Kant, including the medieval\nscholasticism upon which it endeavoured to establish religious beliefs.\nBut has philosophy no other office to perform, and may not its office be\nto reflect upon the tragic sense of life itself, such as we have been\nstudying it, to formulate this conflict between reason and faith,\nbetween science and religion, and deliberately to perpetuate this\nconflict?\n\nLater on Windelband says: \"By philosophy in the systematic, not in the\nhistorical, sense, I understand the critical knowledge of values of\nuniversal validity (_allgemeingiltigen Werten_).\" But what values are\nthere of more universal validity than that of the human will seeking\nbefore all else the personal, individual, and concrete immortality of\nthe soul--or, in other words, the human finality of the Universe--and\nthat of the human reason denying the rationality and even the\npossibility of this desire? What values are there of more universal\nvalidity than the rational or mathematical value and the volitional or\nteleological value of the Universe in conflict with one another?\n\nFor Windelband, as for Kantians and neo-Kantians in general, there are\nonly three normative categories, three universal norms--those of the\ntrue or the false, the beautiful or the ugly, and the morally good or\nevil. Philosophy is reduced to logics, esthetics, and ethics,\naccordingly as it studies science, art, or morality. Another category\nremains excluded--namely, that of the pleasing and the unpleasing, or\nthe agreeable and the disagreeable: in other words, the hedonic. The\nhedonic cannot, according to them, pretend to universal validity, it\ncannot be normative. \"Whosoever throws upon philosophy,\" wrote\nWindelband, \"the burden of deciding the question of optimism and\npessimism, whosoever demands that philosophy should pronounce judgement\non the question as to whether the world is more adapted to produce pain\nthan pleasure, or _vice versa_--such a one, if his attitude is not\nmerely that of a dilettante, sets himself the fantastic task of finding\nan absolute determination in a region in which no reasonable man has\never looked for one.\" It remains to be seen, nevertheless, whether this\nis as clear as it seems, in the case of a man like myself, who am at the\nsame time reasonable and yet nothing but a dilettante, which of course\nwould be the abomination of desolation.\n\nIt was with a very profound insight that Benedetto Croce, in his\nphilosophy of the spirit in relation to esthetics as the science of\nexpression and to logic as the science of pure concept, divided\npractical philosophy into two branches--economics and ethics. He\nrecognizes, in effect, the existence of a practical grade of spirit,\npurely economical, directed towards the singular and unconcerned with\nthe universal. Its types of perfection, of economic genius, are Iago and\nNapoleon, and this grade remains outside morality. And every man passes\nthrough this grade, because before all else he must wish to be himself,\nas an individual, and without this grade morality would be inexplicable,\njust as without esthetics logic would lack meaning. And the discovery of\nthe normative value of the economic grade, which seeks the hedonic, was\nnot unnaturally the work of an Italian, a disciple of Machiavelli, who\nspeculated so fearlessly with regard to _virt\u00f9_, practical efficiency,\nwhich is not exactly the same as moral virtue.\n\nBut at bottom this economic grade is but the rudimentary state of the\nreligious grade. The religious is the transcendental economic or\nhedonic. Religion is a transcendental economy and hedonistic. That which\nman seeks in religion, in religious faith, is to save his own\nindividuality, to eternalize it, which he achieves neither by science,\nnor by art, nor by ethics. God is a necessity neither for science, nor\nart, nor ethics; what necessitates God is religion. And with an insight\nthat amounts to genius our Jesuits speak of the grand business of our\nsalvation. Business--yes, business; something belonging to the economic,\nhedonistic order, although transcendental. We do not need God in order\nthat He may teach us the truth of things, or the beauty of them, or in\norder that He may safeguard morality by means of a system of penalties\nand punishments, but in order that He may save us, in order that He may\nnot let us die utterly. And because this unique longing is the longing\nof each and every normal man--those who are abnormal by reason of their\nbarbarism or their hyperculture may be left out of the reckoning--it is\nuniversal and normative.\n\nReligion, therefore, is a transcendental economy, or, if you like,\nmetaphysic. Together with its logical, esthetic, and ethical values, the\nUniverse has for man an economic value also, which, when thus made\nuniversal and normative, is the religious value. We are not concerned\nonly with truth, beauty, and goodness: we are concerned also and above\nall with the salvation of the individual, with perpetuation, which those\nnorms do not secure for us. That science of economy which is called\npolitical teaches us the most adequate, the most economical way of\nsatisfying our needs, whether these needs are rational or irrational,\nbeautiful or ugly, moral or immoral--a business economically good may be\na swindle, something that in the long run kills the soul--and the\nsupreme human _need_ is the need of not dying, the need of enjoying for\never the plenitude of our own individual limitation. And if the Catholic\neucharistic doctrine teaches that the substance of the body of Jesus\nChrist is present whole and entire in the consecrated Host, and in each\npart of it, this means that God is wholly and entirely in the whole\nUniverse and also in each one of the individuals that compose it. And\nthis is, fundamentally, not a logical, nor an esthetic, nor an ethical\nprinciple, but a transcendental economic or religious principle. And\nwith this norm, philosophy is able to judge of optimism and pessimism.\n_If the human soul is immortal, the world is economically or\nhedonistically good; if not, it is bad_. And the meaning which pessimism\nand optimism give to the categories of good and evil is not an ethical\nsense, but an economic or hedonistic sense. Good is that which satisfies\nour vital longing and evil is that which does not satisfy it.\n\nPhilosophy, therefore, is also the science of the tragedy of life, a\nreflection upon the tragic sense of it. An essay in this philosophy,\nwith its inevitable internal contradictions and antinomies, is what I\nhave attempted in these essays. And the reader must not overlook the\nfact that I have been operating upon myself; that this work partakes of\nthe nature of a piece of self-surgery, and without any other anesthetic\nthan that of the work itself. The enjoyment of operating upon myself has\nennobled the pain of being operated upon.\n\nAnd as for my other claim--the claim that this is a Spanish philosophy,\nperhaps _the_ Spanish philosophy, that if it was an Italian who\ndiscovered the normative and universal value of the economic grade, it\nis a Spaniard who announces that this grade is merely the beginning of\nthe religious grade, and that the essence of our religion, of our\nSpanish Catholicism, consists precisely in its being neither a science,\nnor an art, nor an ethic, but an economy of things eternal--that is to\nsay, of things divine: as for this claim that all this is Spanish, I\nmust leave the task of substantiating it to another and an historical\nwork. But leaving aside the external and written tradition, that which\ncan be demonstrated by reference to historical documents, is there not\nsome present justification of this claim in the fact that I am a\nSpaniard--and a Spaniard who has scarcely ever been outside Spain; a\nproduct, therefore, of the Spanish tradition of the living tradition, of\nthe tradition which is transmitted in feelings and ideas that dream, and\nnot in texts that sleep?\n\nThe philosophy in the soul of my people appears to me as the expression\nof an inward tragedy analogous to the tragedy of the soul of Don\nQuixote, as the expression of a conflict between what the world is as\nscientific reason shows it to be, and what we wish that it might be, as\nour religious faith affirms it to be. And in this philosophy is to be\nfound the explanation of what is usually said about us--namely, that we\nare fundamentally irreducible to _Kultur_--or, in other words, that we\nrefuse to submit to it. No, Don Quixote does not resign himself either\nto the world, or to science or logic, or to art or esthetics, or to\nmorality or ethics.\n\n\"And the upshot of all this,\" so I have been told more than once and by\nmore than one person, \"will be simply that all you will succeed in doing\nwill be to drive people to the wildest Catholicism.\" And I have been\naccused of being a reactionary and even a Jesuit. Be it so! And what\nthen?\n\nYes, I know, I know very well, that it is madness to seek to turn the\nwaters of the river back to their source, and that it is only the\nignorant who seek to find in the past a remedy for their present ills;\nbut I know too that everyone who fights for any ideal whatever, although\nhis ideal may seem to lie in the past, is driving the world on to the\nfuture, and that the only reactionaries are those who find themselves at\nhome in the present. Every supposed restoration of the past is a\ncreation of the future, and if the past which it is sought to restore is\na dream, something imperfectly known, so much the better. The march, as\never, is towards the future, and he who marches is getting there, even\nthough he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not the\nbetter way!...\n\nI feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the\nsoul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the\nRenaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution--learning from them,\nyes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the\nspiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark\nAges. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle\nbetween the Middle Ages and the Renaissance which was the offspring of\nthe Middle Ages.\n\nAnd if some accuse me of subserving the cause of Catholic reaction,\nothers perhaps, the official Catholics.... But these, in Spain, trouble\nthemselves little about anything, and are interested only in their own\nquarrels and dissensions. And besides, poor folk, they have neither eyes\nnor ears!\n\nBut the truth is that my work--I was going to say my mission--is to\nshatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in\naffirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention from faith, and\nthis for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all\nthose who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to\nagnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and\npassionate desire.\n\nWill this work be efficacious? But did Don Quixote believe in the\nimmediate apparential efficacy of his work? It is very doubtful, and at\nany rate he did not by any chance put his visor to the test by slashing\nit a second time. And many passages in his history show that he did not\nlook with much confidence to the immediate success of his design to\nrestore knight-errantry. And what did it matter to him so long as thus\nhe lived and immortalized himself? And he must have surmised, and did in\nfact surmise, that his work would have another and higher efficacy, and\nthat was that it would ferment in the minds of all those who in a pious\nspirit read of his exploits.\n\nDon Quixote made himself ridiculous; but did he know the most tragic\nridicule of all, the inward ridicule, the ridiculousness of a man's self\nto himself, in the eyes of his own soul? Imagine Don Quixote's\nbattlefield to be his own soul; imagine him to be fighting in his soul\nto save the Middle Ages from the Renaissance, to preserve the treasure\nof his infancy; imagine him an inward Don Quixote, with a Sancho, at his\nside, inward and heroical too--and tell me if you find anything comic in\nthe tragedy.\n\nAnd what has Don Quixote left, do you ask? I answer, he has left\nhimself, and a man, a living and eternal man, is worth all theories and\nall philosophies. Other peoples have left chiefly institutions, books;\nwe have left souls; St. Teresa is worth any institution, any _Critique\nof Pure Reason_.\n\nBut Don Quixote was converted. Yes--and died, poor soul. But the other,\nthe real Don Quixote, he who remained on earth and lives amongst us,\nanimating us with his spirit--this Don Quixote was not converted, this\nDon Quixote continues to incite us to make ourselves ridiculous, this\nDon Quixote must never die. And the conversion of the other Don\nQuixote--he who was converted only to die--was possible because he was\nmad, and it was his madness, and not his death nor his conversion that\nimmortalized him, earning him forgiveness for the crime of having been\nborn.[67] _Felix culpa!_ And neither was his madness cured, but only\ntransformed. His death was his last knightly adventure; in dying he\nstormed heaven, which suffereth violence.\n\nThis mortal Don Quixote died and descended into hell, which he entered\nlance on rest, and freed all the condemned, as he had freed the galley\nslaves, and he shut the gates of hell, and tore down the scroll that\nDante saw there and replaced it by one on which was written \"Long live\nhope!\" and escorted by those whom he had freed, and they laughing at\nhim, he went to heaven. And God laughed paternally at him, and this\ndivine laughter filled his soul with eternal happiness.\n\nAnd the other Don Quixote remained here amongst us, fighting with\ndesperation. And does he not fight out of despair? How is it that among\nthe words that English has borrowed from our language, such as _siesta,\ncamarilla, guerrilla_, there is to be found this word _desperdo_? Is not\nthis inward Don Quixote that I spoke of, conscious of his own tragic\ncomicness, a man of despair (_desesperado_). A _desperado_--yes, like\nPizarro and like Loyola. But \"despair is the master of impossibilities,\"\nas we learn from Salazar y Torres (_Elegir al enemigo_, Act I.), and it\nis despair and despair alone that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, mad\nhope. _Spero quia absurdum_, it ought to have been said, rather than\n_credo_.\n\nAnd Don Quixote, who lived in solitude, sought more solitude still; he\nsought the solitudes of the Pe\u00f1a Pobre, in order that there, alone,\nwithout witnesses, he might give himself up to greater follies with\nwhich to assuage his soul. But he was not quite alone, for Sancho\naccompanied him--Sancho the good, Sancho the believing, Sancho the\nsimple. If, as some say, in Spain Don Quixote is dead and Sancho lives,\nthen we are saved, for Sancho, his master dead, will become a\nknight-errant himself. And at any rate he is waiting for some other mad\nknight to follow again.\n\nAnd there is also a tragedy of Sancho. The other Sancho, the Sancho who\njourneyed with the mortal Don Quixote--it is not certain that he died,\nalthough some think that he died hopelessly mad, calling for his lance\nand believing in the truth of all those things which his dying and\nconverted master had denounced and abominated as lies. But neither is it\ncertain that the bachelor Sans\u00f3n Carrasco, or the curate, or the barber,\nor the dukes and canons are dead, and it is with these that the\nheroical Sancho has to contend.\n\nDon Quixote journeyed alone, alone with Sancho, alone with his solitude.\nAnd shall we not also journey alone, we his lovers, creating for\nourselves a Quixotesque Spain which only exists in our imagination?\n\nAnd again we shall be asked: What has Don Quixote bequeathed to\n_Kultur_? I answer: Quixotism, and that is no little thing! It is a\nwhole method, a whole epistemology, a whole esthetic, a whole logic, a\nwhole ethic--above all, a whole religion--that is to say, a whole\neconomy of things eternal and things divine, a whole hope in what is\nrationally absurd.\n\nFor what did Don Quixote fight? For Dulcinea, for glory, for life, for\nsurvival. Not for Iseult, who is the eternal flesh; not for Beatrice,\nwho is theology; not for Margaret, who is the people; not for Helen, who\nis culture. He fought for Dulcinea, and he won her, for he lives.\n\nAnd the greatest thing about him was his having been mocked and\nvanquished, for it was in being overcome that he overcame; he overcame\nthe world by giving the world cause to laugh at him.\n\nAnd to-day? To-day he feels his own comicness and the vanity of his\nendeavours so far as their temporal results are concerned; he sees\nhimself from without--culture has taught him to objectify himself, to\nalienate himself from himself instead of entering into himself--and in\nseeing himself from without he laughs at himself, but with a bitter\nlaughter. Perhaps the most tragic character would be that of a Margutte\nof the inner man, who, like the Margutte of Pulci, should die of\nlaughter, but of laughter at himself. _E rider\u00e1 in eterno_, he will\nlaugh for all eternity, said the Angel Gabriel of Margutte. Do you not\nhear the laughter of God?\n\nThe mortal Don Quixote, in dying, realized his own comicness and bewept\nhis sins; but the immortal Quixote, realizing his own comicness,\nsuperimposes himself upon it and triumphs over it without renouncing it.\n\nAnd Don Quixote does not surrender, because he is not a pessimist, and\nhe fights on. He is not a pessimist, because pessimism is begotten by\nvanity, it is a matter of fashion, pure intellectual snobbism, and Don\nQuixote is neither vain nor modern with any sort of modernity (still\nless is he a modernist), and he does not understand the meaning of the\nword \"snob\" unless it be explained to him in old Christian Spanish. Don\nQuixote is not a pessimist, for since he does not understand what is\nmeant by the _joie de vivre_ he does not understand its opposite.\nNeither does he understand futurist fooleries. In spite of\nClavile\u00f1o,[68] he has not got as far as the aeroplane, which seems to\ntend to put not a few fools at a still greater distance from heaven. Don\nQuixote has not arrived at the age of the tedium of life, a condition\nthat not infrequently takes the form of that topophobia so\ncharacteristic of many modern spirits, who pass their lives running at\ntop speed from one place to another, not from any love of the place to\nwhich they are going, but from hatred of the place they are leaving\nbehind, and so flying from all places: which is one of the forms of\ndespair.\n\nBut Don Quixote hears his own laughter, he hears the divine laughter,\nand since he is not a pessimist, since he believes in life eternal, he\nhas to fight, attacking the modern, scientific, inquisitorial orthodoxy\nin order to bring in a new and impossible Middle Age, dualistic,\ncontradictory, passionate. Like a new Savonarola, an Italian Quixote of\nthe end of the fifteenth century, he fights against this Modern Age that\nbegan with Machiavelli and that will end comically. He fights against\nthe rationalism inherited from the eighteenth century. Peace of mind,\nreconciliation between reason and faith--this, thanks to the providence\nof God, is no longer possible. The world must be as Don Quixote wishes\nit to be, and inns must be castles, and he will fight with it and will,\nto all appearances, be vanquished, but he will triumph by making himself\nridiculous. And he will triumph by laughing at himself and making\nhimself the object of his own laughter.\n\n\"Reason speaks and feeling bites\" said Petrarch; but reason also bites\nand bites in the inmost heart. And more light does not make more warmth.\n\"Light, light, more light!\" they tell us that the dying Goethe cried.\nNo, warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we die of cold and not of darkness.\nIt is not the night kills, but the frost. We must liberate the enchanted\nprincess and destroy the stage of Master Peter.[69]\n\nBut God! may there not be pedantry too in thinking ourselves the objects\nof mockery and in making Don Quixotes of ourselves? Kierkegaard said\nthat the regenerate (_Opvakte_) desire that the wicked world should mock\nat them for the better assurance of their own regeneracy, for the\nenjoyment of being able to bemoan the wickedness of the world\n(_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, ii., Afsnit ii., cap. 4,\nsect. 2, b).\n\nThe question is, how to avoid the one or the other pedantry, or the one\nor the other affectation, if the natural man is only a myth and we are\nall artificial.\n\nRomanticism! Yes, perhaps that is partly the word. And there is an\nadvantage in its very lack of precision. Against romanticism the forces\nof rationalist and classicist pedantry, especially in France, have\nlatterly been unchained. Romanticism itself is merely another form of\npedantry, the pedantry of sentiment? Perhaps. In this world a man of\nculture is either a dilettante or a pedant: you have to take your\nchoice. Yes, Ren\u00e9 and Adolphe and Obermann and Lara, perhaps they were\nall pedants.... The question is to seek consolation in disconsolation.\n\nThe philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration,\nessentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a\n_demi-mondaine_ philosophy. Leave out the _demi_; call it _mondaine_,\nmundane. Mundane--yes, a philosophy for the world and not for\nphilosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. The\nworld desires illusion (_mundus vult decipi_)--either the illusion\nantecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent to\nreason, which is religion. And Machiavelli has said that whosoever\nwishes to delude will always find someone willing to be deluded. Blessed\nare they who are easily befooled! A Frenchman, Jules de Gaultier, said\nthat it was the privilege of his countrymen _n'\u00eatre pas dupe_--not to be\ntaken in. A sorry privilege!\n\nScience does not give Don Quixote what he demands of it. \"Then let him\nnot make the demand,\" it will be said, \"let him resign himself, let him\naccept life and truth as they are.\" But he does not accept them as they\nare, and he asks for signs, urged thereto by Sancho, who stands by his\nside. And it is not that Don Quixote does not understand what those\nunderstand who talk thus to him, those who succeed in resigning\nthemselves and accepting rational life and rational truth. No, it is\nthat the needs of his heart are greater. Pedantry? Who knows!...\n\nAnd in this critical century, Don Quixote, who has also contaminated\nhimself with criticism, has to attack his own self, the victim of\nintellectualism and of sentimentalism, and when he wishes to be most\nspontaneous he appears to be most affected. And he wishes, unhappy man,\nto rationalize the irrational and irrationalize the rational. And he\nsinks into the despair of the critical century whose two greatest\nvictims were Nietzsche and Tolstoi. And through this despair he reaches\nthe heroic fury of which Giordano Bruno spoke--that intellectual Don\nQuixote who escaped from the cloister--and becomes an awakener of\nsleeping souls (_dormitantium animorum excubitor_), as the ex-Dominican\nsaid of himself--he who wrote: \"Heroic love is the property of those\nsuperior natures who are called insane (_insano_) not because they do\nnot know (_no sanno_), but because they over-know (_soprasanno_).\"\n\nBut Bruno believed in the triumph of his doctrines; at any rate the\ninscription at the foot of his statue in the Campo dei Fiori, opposite\nthe Vatican, states that it has been dedicated to him by the age which\nhe had foretold (_il secolo da lui divinato_). But our Don Quixote, the\ninward, the immortal Don Quixote, conscious of his own comicness, does\nnot believe that his doctrines will triumph in this world, because they\nare not of it. And it is better that they should not triumph. And if the\nworld wished to make Don Quixote king, he would retire alone to the\nmountain, fleeing from the king-making and king-killing crowds, as\nChrist retired alone to the mountain when, after the miracle of the\nloaves and fishes, they sought to proclaim him king. He left the title\nof king for the inscription written over the Cross.\n\nWhat, then, is the new mission of Don Quixote, to-day, in this world? To\ncry aloud, to cry aloud in the wilderness. But though men hear not, the\nwilderness hears, and one day it will be transformed into a resounding\nforest, and this solitary voice that goes scattering over the wilderness\nlike seed, will fructify into a gigantic cedar, which with its hundred\nthousand tongues will sing an eternal hosanna to the Lord of life and of\ndeath.\n\nAnd now to you, the younger generation, bachelor Carrascos of a\nEuropeanizing regenerationism, you who are working after the best\nEuropean fashion, with scientific method and criticism, to you I say:\nCreate wealth, create nationality, create art, create science, create\nethics, above all create--or rather, translate--_Kultur_, and thus kill\nin yourselves both life and death. Little will it all last you!...\n\nAnd with this I conclude--high time that I did!--for the present at any\nrate, these essays on the tragic sense of life in men and in peoples, or\nat least in myself--who am a man--and in the soul of my people as it is\nreflected in mine.\n\nI hope, reader, that some time while our tragedy is still playing, in\nsome interval between the acts, we shall meet again. And we shall\nrecognize one another. And forgive me if I have troubled you more than\nwas needful and inevitable, more than I intended to do when I took up my\npen proposing to distract you for a while from your distractions. And\nmay God deny you peace, but give you glory!\n\nSALAMANCA, _In the year of grace_ 1912.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[59] \"Que tal?\" o \"como va?\" y es aquella que responde: \"se vive!\"\n\n[60] Whenever I consider that I needs must die, I stretch my cloak upon\nthe ground and am not surfeited with sleeping.\n\n[61] No es consuelo de desdichas--es otra desdicha aparte--querer a\nquien las padece--persuadir que no son tales (_Gustos y diogustos no son\nni\u00e9s que imaginati\u00f3n_, Act I., Scene 4).\n\n[62] _Don Quijote_, part i., chap, i.\n\n[63] Preface.\n\n[64] _El individualismo espa\u00f1ol_, in vol. clxxi., March 1, 1903.\n\n[65] See _El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha_, part ii.,\nchap. lviii., and the corresponding chapter in my _Vida de Don Quijote y\nSancho_.\n\n[66] In an article which was to have been published on the occasion of\nthe ultimatum, and of which the original is in the possession of the\nConde do Ameal. This fragment appeared in the Portuguese review, _A\nAgu\u00eda_ (No. 3), March, 1912.\n\n[67] An allusion to the phrase in Calder\u00f3n's _La Vida es Sue\u00f1o_, \"Que\ndelito comet\u00ed contra vosotros naciendo?\"--J.E.C.F.\n\n[68] The wooden horse upon which Don Quixote imagined that he and Sancho\nhad been carried in the air. See _Don Quijote_, part ii., chaps. 40 and\n41.--J.E.C.F.\n\n[69] _Don Quijote_, part ii., chap. 26.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n\u00c6schylus, 246\nAlexander of Aphrodisias, 88\nAmiel, 18, 68, 228\nAnaxagoras, 143\nAngelo of Foligno, 289\nAntero de Quintal, 240, 315\nArdigo, Roberto, 238\nAristotle, 1, 21, 80, 144, 165, 171, 232, 235\nArnold, Matthew, 103\nAthanasius, 63-65\nAvenarius, Richard, 144, 310\nde Ayala, Ram\u00f3n P\u00e9rez, 303\n\nBacon, 310\nBalfour, A.J., 27\nBalmes, 84, 85\nBergson, 144, 328\nBerkeley, Bishop, 87, 146\nBesant, Mrs. A., 291\nBoccaccio, 52\nB\u00f6hme, Jacob, 227, 297\nBonnefon, 250, 254\nBossuet, 226, 231\nBrooks, Phillips, 76, 190\nBrowning, Robert, 112, 181, 249, 254\nBruneti\u00e8re, 103, 298\nBrunhes, B., 235, 237, 238\nBruno, 301, 329\nB\u00fcchner, 95\nButler, Joseph, 5, 6, 87\nByron, Lord, 94, 102, 103, 132\n\nCalder\u00f3n, 39, 268, 323\nCalvin, 121, 246\nCampanella, 301\nCarducci, 102, 306\nCarlyle, 231, 298\nCatherine of Sienna, 289\nCauchy, 236\nCervantes, 220, 306\nChanning, W.E., 78\nCicero, 165, 216, 221\nClement of Alexandria, 32\nCort\u00e9s, Donoso, 74\nCosta, Joaquin, 309\nCournot, 192, 217, 222, 306\nCowper, 43\nCroce, Benedetto, 313, 318\n\nDante, 42, 51, 140, 223, 233, 256, 295\nDarwin, 72, 147\nDescartes, 34, 86, 107, 224, 237, 293, 310, 312\nDiderot, 99\nDiego de Estella, 304\nDionysius the Areopagite, 160\nDomingo de Guzm\u00e1n, 289\nDuns Scotus, 76\n\nEckhart, 289\nEmpedocles, 61\nErasmus, 112, 301\nErigena, 160, 167\n\nF\u00e9nelon, 224\nFichte, 8, 29\nFlaubert, 94, 219\nFouill\u00e9e, 261\nFourier, 278\nFrancesco de Sanctis, 220\nFrancke, August, 120\nFranklin, 248\n\nGalileo, 72, 267, 302\nGanivet, Angel, 313\nde Gaultier, Jules, 328\nGoethe, 218, 264, 288, 299, 309\nGounod, 56\nGratry, P\u00e8re, 236\n\nHaeckel, 95\nHarnack, 59, 64, 65, 69, 75\nHartmann, 146\nHegel, 5, 111, 170, 294, 309, 310\nHeraclitus, 165\nHermann, 69, 70, 77, 165, 217\nHerodotus, 140\nHippocrates, 143\nHodgson, S.H., 30\nHolberg, 109\nHolmes, Oliver Wendell, 257, 311\nHume, David, 79, 86, 104, 310\nHume, Martin A.S., 312\nHuntingdon, A.M., 298\n\nJames, William, 5, 81, 86\nJansen, 121\nJuan de los Angeles, 1, 207, 286\nJuan de la Cruz, 67, 289, 293\nJustin Martyr, 63\n\nKaftan, 68, 222\nKant, Immanuel, 3, 4, 11, 13, 67, 68, 73, 79, 114, 143, 166, 294, 310,\n    311, 317\n\u00e0 Kempis, 51, 99, 277\nKierkegaard, 3, 109, 115, 123, 153, 178, 198, 257, 287, 327\nKrause, 294\n\nLactantius, 59, 74, 165, 169\nLamarck, 147\nLamennais, 74, 117, 165, 246\nLaplace, 161\nLeibnitz, 247\nLeo XIII., 75\nLeopardi, 44, 47, 123, 132, 240, 248\nLe Roy, 73\nLessing, 229\nLinn\u00e6us, 1\nLoisy, 72\nLoyola, 122, 307, 314, 324\nLoyson, Hyacinthe, 116\nLucretius, 94, 102\nLuis de Le\u00f3n, 289\nLuther, 3, 121, 270, 294, 301\n\nMach, Dr. E., 114\nMachado, Antonio, 241\nMachiavelli, 296, 326, 328\nde Maistre, Count Joseph, 74, 305\nMalebranche, 63\nMal\u00f3n de Chaide, 66\nManrique, Jorge, 309\nMarcus Aurelius, 315\nMarlowe, Christopher, 299\nMartins, Oliveira, 68\nMazzini, 153\nMelanchthon, 69\nMen\u00e9ndez de Pelayo, 313\nMichelet, 45\nMiguel de Molinos, 216, 219, 228\nMill, Stuart, 104, 310\nMilton, 284\nMoser, Johann Jacob, 252, 263\nMyers, W.H., 88\n\nNietzsche, 50, 61, 100, 231, 239, 328\nNimesius, 59\n\nObermann, 11, 47, 259, 263, 268\nOetinger, Friedrich Christoph, 252, 253\nOrd\u00f3\u00f1ez de Lara, 56\nOrigen, 245\n\nPapini, 238\nPascal, 40, 45, 74, 262, 263\nPetrarch, 327\nPfleiderer, 61\nPius IX., 72\nPizarro, 324\nPlato, 38, 45, 48, 61, 90, 125, 143, 216, 217, 221, 292, 310\nPliny, 165\nPlotinus, 209, 230, 243\nPohle, Joseph, 77\nPomponazzi, Pietro, 88\n\nRenan, 51, 68\nRitschl, Albrecht, 68, 114, 121, 167, 238, 253, 263, 294\nRobertson, F.W., 180\nRobespierre, 41\nRohde, Erwin, 60, 61\nRousseau, 53, 263, 299, 310\nRuysbroek, 289\n\nSaint Augustine, 74, 192, 247\nSaint Bonaventura, 220\nSaint Francis of Assissi, 52, 210\nSaint Paul, 48, 49, 62, 94, 112, 188, 209, 225, 241, 253, 255, 270\nSaint Teresa, 67, 75, 210, 226, 228, 289, 323\nSaint Thomas Aquinas, 83, 92, 233\nSalazar y Torres, 324\nSchleiermacher, 89, 156, 217\nSchopenhauer, 146, 147, 247\nSeeberg, Reinold, 188\nS\u00e9nancour, 43, 47, 260, 263, 299\nSeneca, 231, 313\nSeuse, Heinrich, 75, 289\nShakespeare, 39\nSocrates, 29, 143, 145\nSolon, 17\nSoloviev, 95\nSpencer, Herbert, 89, 124, 238, 253\nSpener, 253\nSpinoza, Benedict, 6, 7, 22, 24, 31, 38, 40, 89, 97-99, 101, 208, 234,\n    310\nStanley, Dean, 91\nStendhal, 311\nStirmer, Max, 29\nSu\u00e1rez, 312\nSwedenborg, 153, 221, 225\n\nTacitus, 56, 94, 142, 216, 306\nTauler, 289\nTennyson, Lord, 33, 103\nTertullian, 74, 94, 104\nThales of Miletus, 143, 317\nThom\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas, 283\nTolstoi, 328\nTroeltsch, Ernst, 70, 112\n\nVelasquez, 70\nVico, Giovanni Baptista, 142, 143\nVinet, A., 93, 113, 160\nVirchow, 95\nVirgil, 249\nVives, Luis, 313\nVogt, 95\n\nWalpole, Horace, 315\nWeizs\u00e4cker, 62, 77\nWells, H.G., 265\nWhitman, Walt, 125\nWindelband, 267, 316, 317\n\nXenophon, 29, 143","title":"Tragic Sense Of Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":119359}