TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO

translator, J. E. CRAWFORD FLITCH

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC

New York

This Dover edition, first published in 1954, is an unabridged andunaltered republication of the English translation originally publishedby Macmillan and Company, Ltd. , in 1921. This edition is published byspecial arrangement with Macmillan and Company, Ltd. 

The publisher is grateful to the Library of the University ofPennsylvania for supplying a copy of this work for the purpose ofreproduction. 

_Standard Book Number: 486-20257-7 Library of Congress Catalog CardNumber: 54-4730_

Manufactured in the United States of AmericaDover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick StreetNew York, N. Y. 10014

CONTENTS

 PAGESINTRODUCTORY ESSAY xi-xxxii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxxiii-xxxv

I

THE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE

 Philosophy and the concrete man--The man Kant, the man Butler, and the man Spinoza--Unity and continuity of the person--Man an end not a means--Intellectual necessities and necessities of the heart and the will--Tragic sense of life in men and in peoples 1-18

II

THE STARTING-POINT

 Tragedy of Paradise--Disease an element of progress--Necessity of knowing in order to live--Instinct of preservation and instinct of perpetuation--The sensible world and the ideal world--Practical starting-point of all philosophy--Knowledge an end in itself?--The man Descartes--The longing not to die 19-37

III

THE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY

 Thirst of being--Cult of immortality--Plato's "glorious risk"--Materialism--Paul's discourse to the Athenians--Intolerance of the intellectuals--Craving for fame--Struggle for survival 38-57

IV

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

 Immortality and resurrection--Development of idea of immortality in Judaic and Hellenic religions--Paul and the dogma of the resurrection--Athanasius--Sacrament of the Eucharist--Lutheranism--Modernism--The Catholic ethic--Scholasticism--The Catholic solution 58-78

V

THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION

 Materialism--Concept of substance--Substantiality of the soul--Berkeley--Myers--Spencer--Combat of life with reason--Theological advocacy--_Odium anti-theologicum_--The rationalist attitude--Spinoza--Nietzsche--Truth and consolation 79-105

VI

IN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS

 Passionate doubt and Cartesian doubt--Irrationality of the problem of immortality--Will and intelligence--Vitalism and rationalism--Uncertainty as basis of faith--The ethic of despair--Pragmatical justification of despair--Summary of preceding criticism 106-131

VII

LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY

 Sexual love--Spiritual love--Tragic love--Love and pity--Personalizing faculty of love--God the Personalization of the All--Anthropomorphic tendency--Consciousness of the Universe--What is Truth?--Finality of the Universe 132-155

VIII

FROM GOD TO GOD

 Concept and feeling of Divinity--Pantheism--Monotheism--The rational God--Proofs of God's existence--Law of necessity--Argument from _Consensus gentium_--The living God--Individuality and personality--God a multiplicity--The God of Reason--The God of Love--Existence of God 156-185

IX

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY

 Personal element in faith--Creative power of faith--Wishing that God may exist--Hope the form of faith--Love and suffering--The suffering God--Consciousness revealed through suffering--Spiritualization of matter 186-215

X

RELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND, AND THE APOCATASTASIS

 What is religion?--The longing for immortality--Concrete representation of a future life--Beatific vision--St. Teresa--Delight requisite for happiness--Degradation of energy--Apocatastasis--Climax of the tragedy--Mystery of the Beyond 216-259

XI

THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM

 Conflict as basis of conduct--Injustice of annihilation--Making ourselves irreplaceable--Religious value of the civil occupation--Business of religion and religion of business--Ethic of domination--Ethic of the cloister--Passion and culture--The Spanish soul 260-296

CONCLUSION

DON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY

 Culture--Faust--The modern Inquisition--Spain and the scientific spirit--Cultural achievement of Spain--Thought and language--Don Quixote the hero of Spanish thought--Religion a transcendental economy--Tragic ridicule--Quixotesque philosophy--Mission of Don Quixote to-day 297-330

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

DON MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO

I sat, several years ago, at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, under thevast tent in which the Bard of Wales was being crowned. After the smallgolden crown had been placed in unsteady equilibrium on the head of aclever-looking pressman, several Welsh bards came on the platform andrecited little epigrams. A Welsh bard is, if young, a pressman, and ifof maturer years, a divine. In this case, as England was at war, theywere all of the maturer kind, and, while I listened to the music oftheir ditties--the sense thereof being, alas! beyond my reach--I wasstruck by the fact that all of them, though different, closely resembledDon Miguel de Unamuno. It is not my purpose to enter into the wasp-nestof racial disquisitions. If there is a race in the world over which moresense and more nonsense can be freely said for lack of definiteinformation than the Welsh, it is surely this ancient Basque people, whose greatest contemporary figure is perhaps Don Miguel de Unamuno. Iam merely setting down that intuitional fact for what it may be worth, though I do not hide my opinion that such promptings of the inner, untutored man are worth more than cavefuls of bones and tombfuls ofundecipherable papers. 

This reminiscence, moreover, which springs up into the light of mymemory every time I think of Don Miguel de Unamuno, has to my mind afurther value in that in it the image of Don Miguel does not appear asevoked by one man, but by many, though many of one species, many who indepth are but one man, one type, the Welsh divine. Now, this unityunderlying a multiplicity, these many faces, moods, and movements, traceable to one only type, I find deeply connected in my mind withUnamuno's person and with what he signifies in Spanish life and letters. And when I further delve into my impression, I first realize anundoubtedly physical relation between the many-one Welsh divines and themany-one Unamuno. A tall, broad-shouldered, bony man, with high cheeks, a beak-like nose, pointed grey beard, and a complexion the colour of thered hematites on which Bilbao, his native town, is built, and whichBilbao ruthlessly plucks from its very body to exchange for gold in themarkets of England--and in the deep sockets under the high aggressiveforehead prolonged by short iron-grey hair, two eyes like gimletseagerly watching the world through spectacles which seem to be purposelypointed at the object like microscopes; a fighting expression, but ofnoble fighting, above the prizes of the passing world, the contempt forwhich is shown in a peculiar attire whose blackness invades even thatlittle triangle of white which worldly men leave on their breast for thenecktie of frivolity and the decorations of vanity, and, blinding it, leaves but the thinnest rim of white collar to emphasize, rather thanrelieve, the priestly effect of the whole. Such is Don Miguel deUnamuno. 

Such is, rather, his photograph. For Unamuno himself is ever changing. Atalker, as all good Spaniards are nowadays, but a talker in earnest andwith his heart in it, he is varied, like the subjects of hisconversation, and, still more, like the passions which they awake inhim. And here I find an unsought reason in intellectual support of thatintuitional observation which I noted down in starting--that Unamunoresembles the Welsh in that he is not ashamed of showing hispassions--a thing which he has often to do, for he is very much aliveand feels therefore plenty of them. But a word of caution may here benecessary, since that term, "passion, " having been diminished--that is, made meaner--by the world, an erroneous impression might be conveyed bywhat precedes, of the life and ways of Unamuno. So that it may not besuperfluous to say that Don Miguel de Unamuno is a Professor of Greek inthe University of Salamanca, an ex-Rector of it who left behind thereputation of being a strong ruler; a father of a numerous family, and aman who has sung the quiet and deep joys of married life with arestraint, a vigour, and a nobility which it would be difficult to matchin any literature. _Yet_ a passionate man--or, as he would perhapsprefer to say, _therefore_ a passionate man. But in a major, not in aminor key; of strong, not of weak passions. 

The difference between the two lies perhaps in that the man with strongpassions lives them, while the man with weak passions is lived by them, so that while weak passions paralyze the will, strong passions urge manto action. It is such an urge towards life, such a vitality ever awake, which inspires Unamuno's multifarious activities in the realm of themind. The duties of his chair of Greek are the first claim upon histime. But then, his reading is prodigious, as any reader of this bookwill realize for himself. Not only is he familiar with thestock-in-trade of every intellectual worker--the Biblical, Greek, Roman, and Italian cultures--but there is hardly anything worth reading inEurope and America which he has not read, and, but for the Slavlanguages, in the original. Though never out of Spain, and seldom out ofSalamanca, he has succeeded in establishing direct connections with mostof the intellectual leaders of the world, and in gathering anastonishingly accurate knowledge of the spirit and literature of foreignpeoples. It was in his library at Salamanca that he once explained toan Englishman the meaning of a particular Scotticism in Robert Burns;and it was there that he congratulated another Englishman on his havingread _Rural Rides_, "the hall-mark, " he said, "of the man of letters whois no mere man of letters, but also a man. " From that corner of Castile, he has poured out his spirit in essays, poetry, criticism, novels, philosophy, lectures, and public meetings, and that daily toil of pressarticle writing which is the duty rather than the privilege of mostpresent-day writers in Spain. Such are the many faces, moods, andmovements in which Unamuno appears before Spain and the world. And yet, despite this multiplicity and this dispersion, the dominant impressionwhich his personality leaves behind is that of a vigorous unity, anunswerving concentration both of mind and purpose. Bagaria, the nationalcaricaturist, a genius of rhythm and character which the war revealed, but who was too good not to be overshadowed by the facile art ofRaemaekers (imagine Goya overshadowed by Reynolds!), once representedUnamuno as an owl. A marvellous thrust at the heart of Unamuno'scharacter. For all this vitality and ever-moving activity of mind isshot through by the absolute immobility of two owlish eyes piercing thedarkness of spiritual night. And this intense gaze into the mystery isthe steel axis round which his spirit revolves and revolves indesperation; the unity under his multiplicity; the one fire under hispassions and the inspiration of his whole work and life. 

 * * * * *

It was Unamuno himself who once said that the Basque is the alkaloid ofthe Spaniard. The saying is true, so far as it goes. But it would bemore accurate to say "one of the two alkaloids. " It is probable that ifthe Spanish character were analyzed--always provided that theMediterranean aspect of it be left aside as a thing apart--two mainprinciples would be recognized in it--_i. E. _, the Basque, richer inconcentration, substance, strength; and the Andalusian, more given toobservation, grace, form. The two types are to this day sociallyopposed. The Andalusian is a people which has lived down manycivilizations, and in which even illiterate peasants possess a kind ofinnate education. The Basques are a primitive people of mountaineers andfishermen, in which even scholars have a peasant-like roughness notunlike the roughness of Scotch tweeds--or character. It is the evenbalancing of these two elements--the force of the Northerner with thegrace of the Southerner--which gives the Castilian his admirable poiseand explains the graceful virility of men such as Fray Luis de León andthe feminine strength of women such as Queen Isabel and Santa Teresa. Weare therefore led to expect in so forcible a representative of theBasque race as Unamuno the more substantial and earnest features of theSpanish spirit. 

Our expectation is not disappointed. And to begin with it appears inthat very concentration of his mind and soul on the mystery of man'sdestiny on earth. Unamuno is in earnest, in dead earnest, as to thismatter. This earnestness is a distinct Spanish, nay, Basque feature inhim. There is something of the stern attitude of Loyola about his"tragic sense of life, " and on this subject--under one form or another, his only subject--he admits no joke, no flippancy, no subterfuge. A trueheir of those great Spanish saints and mystics whose lifework wasdevoted to the exploration of the kingdoms of faith, he is more humanthan they in that he has lost hold of the firm ground where they hadstuck their anchor. Yet, though loose in the modern world, he refuses tobe drawn away from the main business of the Christian, the saving of hissoul, which, in his interpretation, means the conquest of hisimmortality, his own immortality. 

An individualist. Certainly. And he proudly claims the title. Nothingmore refreshing in these days of hoggish communistic cant than thisgreat voice asserting the divine, the eternal rights of the individual. But it is not with political rights that he is concerned. Politicalindividualism, when not a mere blind for the unlimited freedom of civilprivateering, is but the outcome of that abstract idea of man which heso energetically condemns as pedantic--that is, inhuman. His oppositionof the individual to society is not that of a puerile anarchist to a noless puerile socialist. There is nothing childish about Unamuno. Hisassertion that society is for the individual, not the individual forsociety, is made on a transcendental plane. It is not the argument ofliberty against authority--which can be easily answered on therationalistic plane by showing that authority is in its turn the libertyof the social or collective being, a higher, more complex, andlonger-living "individual" than the individual pure and simple. It israther the unanswerable argument of eternity against duration. Now thatargument must rest on a religious basis. And it is on a religious basisthat Unamuno founds his individualism. Hence the true Spanish flavour ofhis social theory, which will not allow itself to be set down andanalyzed into principles of ethics and politics, with their inevitabletendency to degenerate into mere economics, but remains free and fluidand absolute, like the spirit. 

Such an individualism has therefore none of the features of thatchildish half-thinking which inspires most anarchists. It is, on thecontrary, based on high thinking, the highest of all, that which refusesto dwell on anything less than man's origin and destination. We are hereconfronted with that humanistic tendency of the Spanish mind which canbe observed as the dominant feature of her arts and literature. Allraces are of course predominantly concerned with man. But they allmanifest their concern with a difference. Man is in Spain a concretebeing, the man of flesh and bones, and the whole man. He is neithersubtilized into an idea by pure thinking nor civilized into a gentlemanby social laws and prejudices. Spanish art and letters deal withconcrete, tangible persons. Now, there is no more concrete, no moretangible person for every one of us than ourself. Unamuno is thereforeright in the line of Spanish tradition in dealing predominantly--onemight almost say always--with his own person. The feeling of theawareness of one's own personality has seldom been more forciblyexpressed than by Unamuno. This is primarily due to the fact that he ishimself obsessed by it. But in his expression of it Unamuno derives alsosome strength from his own sense of matter and the material--again atypically Spanish element of his character. Thus his human beings are asmuch body as soul, or rather body and soul all in one, a union which headmirably renders by bold mixtures of physical and spiritual metaphors, as in _gozarse uno la carne del alma_ (to enjoy the flesh of one's ownsoul). 

In fact, Unamuno, as a true Spaniard which he is, refuses to surrenderlife to ideas, and that is why he runs shy of abstractions, in which hesees but shrouds wherewith we cover dead thoughts. He is solelyconcerned with his own life, nothing but his life, and the whole of hislife. An egotistical position? Perhaps. Unamuno, however, can and doesanswer the charge. We can only know and feel humanity in the one humanbeing which we have at hand. It is by penetrating deep into ourselvesthat we find our brothers in us--branches of the same trunk which canonly touch each other by seeking their common origin. This searchingwithin, Unamuno has undertaken with a sincerity, a fearlessness whichcannot be excelled. Nowhere will the reader find the innercontradictions of a modern human being, who is at the same time healthyand capable of thought set down with a greater respect for truth. Herethe uncompromising tendency of the Spanish race, whose eyes never turnaway from nature, however unwelcome the sight, is strengthened by thatpassion for life which burns in Unamuno. The suppression of theslightest thought or feeling for the sake of intellectual order wouldappear to him as a despicable worldly trick. Thus it is preciselybecause he does sincerely feel a passionate love of his own life that hethinks out with such scrupulous accuracy every argument which he findsin his mind--his own mind, a part of his life--against the possibilityof life after death; but it is also because he feels that, despite suchconclusive arguments, his will to live perseveres, that he refuses tohis intellect the power to kill his faith. A knight-errant of thespirit, as he himself calls the Spanish mystics, he starts for hisadventures after having, like Hernán Cortés, burnt his ships. But, is itnecessary to enhance his figure by literary comparison? He is what hewants to be, a man--in the striking expression which he chose as a titlefor one of his short stories, _nothing less than a whole man_. Not amere thinking machine, set to prove a theory, nor an actor on the worldstage, singing a well-built poem, well built at the price of many acompromise; but a whole man, with all his affirmations and all hisnegations, all the pitiless thoughts of a penetrating mind that denies, and all the desperate self-assertions of a soul that yearns for eternallife. 

This strife between enemy truths, the truth thought and the truth felt, or, as he himself puts it, between veracity and sincerity, is Unamuno's_raison d'être_. And it is because the "_Tragic Sense of Life_" is themost direct expression of it that this book is his masterpiece. Theconflict is here seen as reflected in the person of the author. The bookopens by a definition of the Spanish man, the "man of flesh and bones, "illustrated by the consideration of the real living men who stood behindthe bookish figures of great philosophers and consciously orunconsciously shaped and misshaped their doctrines in order to satisfytheir own vital yearnings. This is followed by the statement of the willto live or hunger for immortality, in the course of which the usualsubterfuges with which this all-important issue is evaded in philosophy, theology, or mystic literature, are exposed and the real, concrete, "flesh and bones" character of the immortality which men desire isreaffirmed. The Catholic position is then explained as the _vital_attitude in the matter, summed up in Tertullian's _Credo quia absurdum_, and this is opposed to the critical attitude which denies thepossibility of individual survival in the sense previously defined. ThusUnamuno leads us to his inner deadlock: his reason can rise no higherthan scepticism, and, unable to become vital, dies sterile; his faith, exacting anti-rational affirmations and unable therefore to beapprehended by the logical mind, remains incommunicable. From the bottomof this abyss Unamuno builds up his theory of life. But is it a theory?Unamuno does not claim for it such an intellectual dignity. He knows toowell that in the constructive part of his book his vital self takes theleading part and repeatedly warns his reader of the fact, lest criticalobjections might be raised against this or that assumption orself-contradiction. It is on the survival of his will to live, after allthe onslaughts of his critical intellect, that he finds the basis forhis belief--or rather for his effort to believe. Self-compassion leadsto self-love, and this self-love, founded as it is on a universalconflict, widens into love of all that lives and therefore wants tosurvive. So, by an act of love, springing from our own hunger forimmortality, we are led to give a conscience to the Universe--that is, to create God. 

Such is the process by which Unamuno, from the transcendental pessimismof his inner contradiction, extracts an everyday optimism founded onlove. His symbol of this attitude is the figure of Don Quixote, of whomhe truly says that his creed "can hardly be called idealism, since hedid not fight for ideas: it was spiritualism, for he fought for thespirit. " Thus he opposes a synthetical to an analytical attitude; areligious to an ethico-scientific ideal; Spain, his Spain--_i. E. _, thespiritual manifestation of the Spanish race--to Europe, hisEurope--_i. E. _, the intellectual manifestation of the white race, whichhe sees in Franco-Germany; and heroic love, even when comicallyunpractical, to culture, which, in this book, written in 1912, isalready prophetically spelt Kultura. 

This courageous work is written in a style which is the man--forBuffon's saying, seldom true, applies here to the letter. It is writtenas Carlyle wrote, not merely with the brain, but with the whole soul andthe whole body of the man, and in such a vivid manner that one canwithout much effort imagine the eager gesticulation which now and thenunderlines, interprets, despises, argues, denies, and above all asserts. In his absolute subservience to the matter in hand this manner ofwriting has its great precedent in Santa Teresa. The differences, andthey are considerable, are not of art, absent in either case, but ofnature. They are such deep and obvious differences as obtain between thedevout, ignorant, graceful nun of sixteenth-century Avila and thefree-thinking, learned, wilful professor of twentieth-century Salamanca. In the one case, as in the other, the language is the most direct andsimple required. It is also the least literary and the most popular. Unamuno, who lives in close touch with the people, has enriched theSpanish literary language by returning to it many a popular term. Hisvocabulary abounds in racy words of the soil, and his writings gain fromthem an almost peasant-like pith and directness which suits his ownBasque primitive nature. His expression occurs simultaneously with thethoughts and feelings to be expressed, the flow of which, but looselycontrolled by the critical mind, often breaks through the meshes ofestablished diction and gives birth to new forms created under thepressure of the moment. This feature Unamuno has also in common withSanta Teresa, but what in the Saint was a self-ignorant charm becomes inUnamuno a deliberate manner inspired, partly by an acute sense of thesymbolical and psychological value of word-connections, partly by thatgenuine need for expansion of the language which all true originalthinkers or "feelers" must experience, but partly also by an acquiredhabit of juggling with words which is but natural in a philologistendowed with a vigorous imagination. Unamuno revels in words. Hepositively enjoys stretching them beyond their usual meaning, twistingthem, composing, opposing, and transposing them in all sorts of possibleways. This game--not wholly unrewarded now and then by strikingintellectual finds--seems to be the only relaxation which he allows hisusually austere mind. It certainly is the only light feature of a stylethe merit of which lies in its being the close-fitting expression of agreat mind earnestly concentrated on a great idea. 

 * * * * *

The earnestness, the intensity, and the oneness of his predominantpassion are the main cause of the strength of Unamuno's philosophicwork. They remain his main asset, yet become also the principal cause ofhis weakness, as a creative artist. Great art can only flourish in thetemperate zone of the passions, on the return journey from the torrid. Unamuno, as a creator, has none of the failings of those artists whohave never felt deeply. But he does show the limitations of thoseartists who cannot cool down. And the most striking of them is that atbottom he is seldom able to put himself in a purely esthetical mood. Inthis, as in many other features, Unamuno curiously resemblesWordsworth--whom, by the way, he is one of the few Spaniards to readand appreciate. [1] Like him, Unamuno is an essentially purposeful andutilitarian mind. Of the two qualities which the work of art requiresfor its inception--earnestness and detachment--both Unamuno andWordsworth possess the first; both are deficient in the second. Theirinterest in their respective leading thought--survival in the first, virtue in the second--is too direct, too pressing, to allow them the"distance" necessary for artistic work. Both are urged to work by alofty utilitarianism--the search for God through the individual soul inUnamuno, the search for God through the social soul in Wordsworth--sothat their thoughts and sensations are polarized and their spirit losesthat impartial transparence for nature's lights without which no greatart is possible. Once suggested, this parallel is too rich in sidelightsto be lightly dropped. This single-mindedness which distinguishes themexplains that both should have consciously or unconsciously chosen alife of semi-seclusion, for Unamuno lives in Salamanca very much asWordsworth lived in the Lake District--

 in a still retreat Sheltered, but not to social duties lost, hence in both a certain proclivity towards ploughing a solitary furrowand becoming self-centred. There are no doubt important differences. TheEnglishman's sense of nature is both keener and more concrete; while theSpaniard's knowledge of human nature is not barred by the subtleinhibitions and innate limitations which tend to blind its moreunpleasant aspects to the eye of the Englishman. There is more courageand passion in the Spaniard; more harmony and goodwill in theEnglishman; the one is more like fire, the other like light. ForWordsworth, a poem is above all an essay, a means for conveying a lessonin forcible and easily remembered terms to those who are in need ofimprovement. For Unamuno, a poem or a novel (and he holds that a novelis but a poem) is the outpouring of a man's passion, the overflow of theheart which cannot help itself and lets go. And it may be that theessential difference between the two is to be found in this differencebetween their respective purposes: Unamuno's purpose is more intimatelypersonal and individual; Wordsworth's is more social and objective. Thusboth miss the temperate zone, where emotion takes shape into the mouldsof art; but while Wordsworth is driven by his ideal of social servicethis side of it, into the cold light of both moral and intellectualself-control, Unamuno remains beyond, where the molten metal is too nearthe fire of passion, and cannot cool down into shape. 

Unamuno is therefore not unlike Wordsworth in the insufficiency of hissense of form. We have just seen the essential cause of thisinsufficiency to lie in the nonesthetical attitude of his mind, and wehave tried to show one of the roots of such an attitude in the veryloftiness and earnestness of his purpose. Yet, there are others, forliving nature is many-rooted as it is many-branched. It cannot bedoubted that a certain refractoriness to form is a typical feature ofthe Basque character. The sense of form is closely in sympathy with thefeminine element in human nature, and the Basque race is stronglymasculine. The predominance of the masculine element--strength withoutgrace--is as typical of Unamuno as it is of Wordsworth. The literarygifts which might for the sake of synthesis be symbolized in a smile areabsent in both. There is as little humour in the one as in the other. Humour, however, sometimes occurs in Unamuno, but only in hisill-humoured moments, and then with a curious bite of its own which addsan unconscious element to its comic effect. Grace only visits them inmoments of inspiration, and then it is of a noble character, enhanced asit is by the ever-present gift of strength. And as for the sense forrhythm and music, both Unamuno and Wordsworth seem to be limited to themost vigorous and masculine gaits. This feature is particularlypronounced in Unamuno, for while Wordsworth is painstaking, all-observant, and too good a "teacher" to underestimate the importanceof pleasure in man's progress, Unamuno knows no compromise. His aim isnot to please but to strike, and he deliberately seeks the naked, theforceful, even the brutal word for truth. There is in him, however, acause of formlessness from which Wordsworth is free--namely, aneagerness for sincerity and veracity which brushes aside allpreparation, ordering or planning of ideas as suspect of "dishing up, "intellectual trickery, and juggling with spontaneous truths. 

 * * * * *

Such qualities--both the positive and the negative--are apparent in hispoetry. In it, the appeal of force and sincerity is usually strongerthan that of art. This is particularly the case in his first volume(_Poesías_, 1907), in which a lofty inspiration, a noble attitude ofmind, a rich and racy vocabulary, a keen insight into the spirit ofplaces, and above all the overflowing vitality of a strong man in theforce of ripeness, contend against the still awkward gait of the Basqueand a certain rebelliousness of rhyme. The dough of the poetic languageis here seen heavily pounded by a powerful hand, bent on reducing itsangularities and on improving its plasticity. Nor do we need to wait forfurther works in order to enjoy the reward of such efforts, for it isattained in this very volume more than once, as for instance in _Muereen el mar el ave que voló del nido_, a beautiful poem in which emotionand thought are happily blended into exquisite form. 

In his last poem, _El Cristo de Velázquez_ (1920), Unamuno undertakesthe task of giving a poetical rendering of his tragic sense of life, inthe form of a meditation on the Christ of Velázquez, the beautiful andpathetic picture in the Prado. Why Velázquez's and not Christ himself?The fact is that, though in his references to actual forms, Unamunoclosely follows Velázquez's picture, the spiritual interpretation of itwhich he develops as the poem unfolds itself is wholly personal. Itwould be difficult to find two great Spaniards wider apart than Unamunoand Velázquez, for if Unamuno is the very incarnation of the masculinespirit of the North--all strength and substance--Velázquez is the imageof the feminine spirit of the South--all grace and form. Velázquez is alimpid mirror, with a human depth, yet a mirror. That Unamuno hasdeparted from the image of Christ which the great Sevillian reflected onhis immortal canvas was therefore to be expected. But then Unamuno has, while speaking of Don Quixote, whom he has also freely and personallyinterpreted, [2] taken great care to point out that a work of art is, foreach of us, all that we see in it. And, moreover, Unamuno has not somuch departed from Velázquez's image of Christ as delved into itsdepths, expanded, enlarged it, or, if you prefer, seen in its limpidsurface the immense figure of his own inner Christ. However free andunorthodox in its wide scope of images and ideas, the poem is in itsform a regular meditation in the manner approved by the Catholic Church, and it is therefore meet that it should rise from a concrete, tangibleobject as it is recommended to the faithful. To this concrete characterof its origin, the poem owes much of its suggestiveness, as witness thefollowing passage quoted here, with a translation sadly unworthy of theoriginal, as being the clearest link between the poetical meditationand the main thought that underlies all the work and the life ofUnamuno. 

NUBE NEGRA

 O es que una nube negra de los cielos ese negror le dió a tu cabellera de nazareno, cual de mustio sauce de una noche sin luna sobre el río? ¿Es la sombra del ala sin perfiles del ángel de la nada negadora, de Luzbel, que en su caída inacabable --fondo no puede dar--su eterna cuita clava en tu frente, en tu razón? ¿Se vela, el claro Verbo en Ti con esa nube, negra cual de Luzbel las negras alas, mientras brilla el Amor, todo desnudo, con tu desnudo pecho por cendal?

BLACK CLOUD

 Or was it then that a black cloud from heaven Such blackness gave to your Nazarene's hair, As of a languid willow o'er the river Brooding in moonless night? Is it the shadow Of the profileless wing of Luzbel, the Angel Of denying nothingness, endlessly falling-- Bottom he ne'er can touch--whose grief eternal He nails on to Thy forehead, to Thy reason? Is the clear Word in Thee with that cloud veiled --A cloud as black as the black wings of Luzbel-- While Love shines naked within Thy naked breast?

The poem, despite its length, easily maintains this lofty levelthroughout, and if he had written nothing else Unamuno would stillremain as having given to Spanish letters the noblest and most sustainedlyrical flight in the language. It abounds in passages of ample beautyand often strikes a note of primitive strength in the true Old Testamentstyle. It is most distinctively a poem in a major key, in a group with_Paradise Lost_ and _The Excursion_, but in a tone halfway between thetwo; and, as coming from the most Northern-minded and substantial poetthat Spain ever had, wholly free from that tendency towardsgrandiloquence and Ciceronian drapery which blighted previous similarefforts in Spain. Its weakness lies in a certain monotony due to theinterplay of Unamuno's two main limitations as an artist: the absolutesurrender to one dominant thought and a certain deficiency of formbordering here on contempt. The plan is but a loose sequence ofmeditations on successive aspects of Christ as suggested by images oradvocations of His divine person, or even of parts of His human body:Lion, Bull, Lily, Sword, Crown, Head, Knees. Each meditation is treatedin a period of blank verse, usually of a beautiful texture, thesplendour of which is due less to actual images than to the inner vigourof ideas and the eagerness with which even the simplest facts areinterpreted into significant symbols. Yet, sometimes, this blank versebecomes hard and stony under the stubborn hammering of a too insistentmind, and the device of ending each meditation with a line accented onits last syllable tends but to increase the monotony of the whole. 

Blank verse is never the best medium for poets of a strong masculineinspiration, for it does not sufficiently correct their usual deficiencyin form. Such poets are usually at their best when they bind themselvesto the discipline of existing forms and particularly when they limit themovements of their muse to the "sonnet's scanty plot of ground. "Unamuno's best poetry, as Wordsworth's, is in his sonnets. His _Rosariode Sonetos Líricos_, published in 1911, contains some of the finestsonnets in the Spanish language. There is variety in this volume--moreat least than is usual in Unamuno: from comments on events of localpolitics (sonnet lii. ) which savour of the more prosaic side ofWordsworth, to meditations on space and time such as that sonnetxxxvii. , so reminiscent of Shelley's _Ozymandias of Egypt_; from asuggestive homily to a "Don Juan of Ideas" whose thirst for knowledge is"not love of truth, but intellectual lust, " and whose "thought istherefore sterile" (sonnet cvii. ), to an exquisitely rendered moonlightlove scene (sonnet civ. ). The author's main theme itself, which ofcourse occupies a prominent part in the series, appears treated undermany different lights and in genuinely poetical moods which truly dojustice to the inherent wealth of poetical inspiration which itcontains. Many a sonnet might be quoted here, and in particular thatsombre and fateful poem _Nihil Novum sub Sole_ (cxxiii. ), which defeatsits own theme by the striking originality of its inspiration. 

So active, so positive is the inspiration of this poetry that thequestion of outside influences does not even arise. Unamuno is probablythe Spanish contemporary poet whose manner owes least, if anything atall, to modern developments of poetry such as those which take theirsource in Baudelaire and Verlaine. These over-sensitive and over-refinedartists have no doubt enriched the sensuous, the formal, thesentimental, even the intellectual aspects of verse with an admirablevariety of exquisite shades, lacking which most poetry seemsold-fashioned to the fastidious palate of modern men. Unamuno is toogenuine a representative of the spiritual and masculine variety ofSpanish genius, ever impervious to French, and generally, tointellectual, influences, to be affected by the esthetic excellence ofthis art. Yet, for all his disregard of the modern resources which itadds to the poetic craft, Unamuno loses none of his modernity. He isindeed more than modern. When, as he often does, he strikes the truepoetic note, he is outside time. His appeal is not in complexity but instrength. He is not refined: he is final. 

 * * * * *

In the Preface to his _Tres Novelas Ejemplares y un Prólogo_ (1921)Unamuno says: " . . . Novelist--that is, poet . . . A novel--that is, apoem. " Thus, with characteristic decision, he sides with the lyricalconception of the novel. There is of course an infinite variety oftypes of novels. But they can probably all be reduced to twoclasses--_i. E. _, the dramatic or objective, and the lyrical orsubjective, according to the mood or inspiration which predominates inthem. The present trend of the world points towards the dramatic orobjective type. This type is more in tune with the detached andscientific character of the age. The novel is often nowadays consideredas a document, a "slice of life, " a piece of information, a literaryphotograph representing places and people which purse or time preventsus from seeing with our own eyes. It is obvious, given what we now knowof him, that such a view of the novel cannot appeal to Unamuno. He is autilitarian, but not of worldly utilities. His utilitarianism transcendsour daily wants and seeks to provide for our eternal ones. He is, moreover, a mind whose workings turn in spiral form towards a centralidea and therefore feels an instinctive antagonism to the dispersivehabits of thought and sensation which such detailed observation of lifeusually entails. For at bottom the opposition between the lyrical andthe dramatic novel may be reduced to that between the poet and thedramatist. Both the dramatist and the poet create in order to link uptheir soul and the world in one complete circle of experience, but thiscircle is travelled in opposite directions. The poet goes inwards first, then out to nature full of his inner experience, and back home. Thedramatist goes outwards first, then comes back to himself, his harvestof wisdom gathered in reality. It is the recognition of his own lyricalinward-looking nature which makes Unamuno pronounce the identity of thenovel and the poem. 

Whatever we may think of it as a general theory, there is little doubtthat this opinion is in the main sound in so far as it refers toUnamuno's own work. His novels are created within. They are--and theirauthor is the first to declare it so--novels which happen in thekingdom of the spirit. Outward points of reference in time and spaceare sparingly given--in fact, reduced to a bare minimum. In some ofthem, as for instance _Niebla_ (1914), the name of the town in which theaction takes place is not given, and such scanty references to thetopography and general features as are supplied would equally apply toany other provincial town of Spain. Action, in the current sense of theword, is correspondingly simplified, since the material and localelements on which it usually exerts itself are schematized, and in theirturn made, as it were, spiritual. Thus a street, a river of colour forsome, for others a series of accurately described shops and dwellings, becomes in Unamuno (see _Niebla_) a loom where the passions and desiresof men and women cross and recross each other and weave the cloth ofdaily life. Even the physical description of characters is reduced to astandard of utmost simplicity. So that, in fine, Unamuno's novels, byeliminating all other material, appear, if the boldness of the metaphorbe permitted, as the spiritual skeletons of novels, conflicts betweensouls. 

Nor is this the last stage in his deepening and narrowing of thecreative furrow. For these souls are in their turn concentrated so thatthe whole of their vitality burns into one passion. If a somewhatfanciful comparison from another art may throw any light on this featureof his work we might say that his characters are to those of Galdós, forinstance, as counterpoint music to the complex modern symphony. JoaquínMonegro, the true hero of his _Abel Sánchez_ (1917), is thepersonification of hatred. Raquel in _Dos Madres_[1] and Catalina in _ElMarqués de Lumbría_[1] are two widely different but vigorous, almostbarbarous, "maternities. " Alejandro, the hero of his powerful _NadaMenos que Todo un Hombre_, [3] is masculine will, pure and unconquerable, save by death. Further still, in most if not all of his maincharacters, we can trace the dominant passion which is their whole beingto a mere variety of the one and only passion which obsesses Unamunohimself, the hunger for life, a full life, here and after. Here is, forinstance, _Abel Sánchez_, a sombre study of hatred, a modern paraphraseof the story of Cain. Joaquín Monegro, the Cain of the novel, has beenreading Byron's poem, and writes in his diary: "It was when I read howLucifer declared to Cain that he, Cain, was immortal, that I began interror to wonder whether I also was immortal and whether in me would bealso immortal my hatred. 'Have I a soul?' I said to myself then. 'Isthis my hatred soul?' And I came to think that it could not beotherwise, that such a hatred cannot be the function of a body. . . . Acorruptible organism could not hate as I hated. "

Thus Joaquín Monegro, like every other main character in his work, appears preoccupied by the same central preoccupation of Unamuno. In oneword, all Unamuno's characters are but incarnations of himself. But thatis what we expected to find in a lyrical novelist. 

There are critics who conclude from this observation that thesecharacters do not exist, that they are mere arguments on legs, personified ideas. Here and there, in Unamuno's novels, there arepassages which lend some colour of plausibility to this view. Yet, it isin my opinion mistaken. Unamuno's characters may be schematized, stripped of their complexities, reduced to the mainspring of theirnature; they may, moreover, reveal mainsprings made of the same steel. But that they are alive no one could deny who has a sense for life. Thevery restraint in the use of physical details which Unamuno has made afeature of his creative work may have led his critics to forget theintensity of those--admirably chosen--which are given. It is significantthat the eyes play an important part in his description of charactersand in his narrative too. His sense of the interpenetration of body andsoul is so deep that he does not for one moment let us forget how bodilyhis "souls" are, and how pregnant with spiritual significance is everyone of their words and gestures. No. These characters are not argumentson legs. They truly are men and women of "flesh and bones, " human, terribly human. 

In thus emphasizing a particular feature in their nature, Unamunoimparts to his creations a certain deformity which savours of romanticdays. Yet Unamuno is not a romanticist, mainly because Romanticism wasan esthetic attitude, and his attitude is seldom purely esthetic. Forall their show of passion, true Romanticists seldom gave their realselves to their art. They created a stage double of their own selves forpublic exhibitions. They sought the picturesque. Their form was lyrical, but their substance was dramatic. Unamuno, on the contrary, even thoughhe often seeks expression in dramatic form, is essentially lyrical. Andif he is always intense, he never is exuberant. He follows the Spanishtradition for restraint--for there is one, along its opposite traditionfor grandiloquence--and, true to the spirit of it, he seeks the maximumof effect through the minimum of means. Then, he never shouts. Here isan example of his quiet method, the rhythmical beauty of which isunfortunately almost untranslatable:

"Y así pasaron días de llanto y de negrura hasta que las lágrimas fueronyéndose hacia adentro y la casa fué derritiendo los negrores" (_Niebla_)(And thus, days of weeping and mourning went by, till the tears began toflow inward and the blackness to melt in the home). 

 * * * * *

Miguel de Unamuno is to-day the greatest literary figure of Spain. Baroja may surpass him in variety of external experience, Azorín indelicate art, Ortega y Gasset in philosophical subtlety, Ayala inintellectual elegance, Valle Inclán in rhythmical grace. Even invitality he may have to yield the first place to that over-whelmingathlete of literature, Blasco Ibáñez. But Unamuno is head and shouldersabove them all in the highness of his purpose and in the earnestness andloyalty with which, Quixote-like, he has served all through his life hisunattainable Dulcinea. Then there is another and most important reasonwhich explains his position as first, _princeps_, of Spanish letters, and it is that Unamuno, by the cross which he has chosen to bear, incarnates the spirit of modern Spain. His eternal conflict betweenfaith and reason, between life and thought, between spirit andintellect, between heaven and civilization, is the conflict of Spainherself. A border country, like Russia, in which East and West mix theirspiritual waters, Spain wavers between two life-philosophies and cannotrest. In Russia, this conflict emerges in literature during thenineteenth century, when Dostoievsky and Tolstoy stand for the Eastwhile Turgeniev becomes the West's advocate. In Spain, a country lessarticulate, and, moreover, a country in which the blending of East andWest is more intimate, for both found a common solvent in centuries ofLatin civilization, the conflict is less clear, less on the surface. To-day Ortega y Gasset is our Turgeniev--not without mixture. Unamuno isour Dostoievsky, but painfully aware of the strength of the other sidewithin him, and full of misgivings. Nor is it sure that when we speak ofEast in this connection we really mean East. There is a third country inEurope in which the "Eastern" view is as forcibly put and as deeplyunderstood as the "Western, " a third border country--England. England, particularly in those of her racial elements conventionally namedCeltic, is closely in sympathy with the "East. " Ireland is almost purely"Eastern" in this respect. That is perhaps why Unamuno feels so strongan attraction for the English language and its literature, and why, evento this day, he follows so closely the movements of English thought. [4]For his own nature, of a human being astride two enemy ideals, draws himinstinctively towards minds equally placed in opposition, yet aco-operating opposition, to progress. Thus Unamuno, whose literaryqualities and defects make him a genuine representative of the moremasculine variety of the Spanish genius, becomes in his spiritual lifethe true living symbol of his country and his time. And that he is greatenough to bear this incarnation is a sufficient measure of hisgreatness. 

S. DE MADARIAGA. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In what follows, I confess to refer not so much to the generallyadmitted opinion on Wordsworth as to my own views on him and his poetry, which I tried to explain in my essay: "The Case of Wordsworth" (_Shelleyand Calderón, and other Essays_, Constable and Co. , 1920). 

[2] _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, explicada y comentada_, por M. DeUnamuno: Madrid, Fernando Fé, 1905. 

[3] These three novels appeared together as _Tres Novelas y un Prólogo_Calpe, Madrid, 1921. 

[4] "Me va interesando ese Dean Inge, " he wrote to me last year. 

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I intended at first to write a short Prologue to this Englishtranslation of my _Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida_, which has beenundertaken by my friend Mr. J. E. Crawford Flitch. But upon furtherconsideration I have abandoned the idea, for I reflected that after allI wrote this book not for Spaniards only, but for all civilized andChristian men--Christian in particular, whether consciously so ornot--of whatever country they may be. 

Furthermore, if I were to set about writing an Introduction in the lightof all that we see and feel now, after the Great War, and, still more, of what we foresee and forefeel, I should be led into writing yetanother book. And that is a thing to be done with deliberation and onlyafter having better digested this terrible peace, which is nothing elsebut the war's painful convalescence. 

As for many years my spirit has been nourished upon the very core ofEnglish literature--evidence of which the reader may discover in thefollowing pages--the translator, in putting my _Sentimiento Trágico_into English, has merely converted not a few of the thoughts andfeelings therein expressed back into their original form of expression. Or retranslated them, perhaps. Whereby they emerge other than theyoriginally were, for an idea does not pass from one language to anotherwithout change. 

The fact that this English translation has been carefully revised here, in my house in this ancient city of Salamanca, by the translator andmyself, implies not merely some guarantee of exactitude, but alsosomething more--namely, a correction, in certain respects, of theoriginal. 

The truth is that, being an incorrigible Spaniard, I am naturally givento a kind of extemporization and to neglectfulness of a filed nicenessin my works. For this reason my original work--and likewise the Italianand French translations of it--issued from the press with a certainnumber of errors, obscurities, and faulty references. The labour whichmy friend Mr. J. E. Crawford Flitch fortunately imposed upon me in makingme revise his translation obliged me to correct these errors, to clarifysome obscurities, and to give greater exactitude to certain quotationsfrom foreign writers. Hence this English translation of my _SentimientoTrágico_ presents in some ways a more purged and correct text than thatof the original Spanish. This perhaps compensates for what it may losein the spontaneity of my Spanish thought, which at times, I believe, isscarcely translatable. 

It would advantage me greatly if this translation, in opening up to me apublic of English-speaking readers, should some day lead to my writingsomething addressed to and concerned with this public. For just as a newfriend enriches our spirit, not so much by what he gives us of himself, as by what he causes us to discover in our own selves, something which, if we had never known him, would have lain in us undeveloped, so it iswith a new public. Perhaps there may be regions in my own Spanishspirit--my Basque spirit, and therefore doubly Spanish--unexplored bymyself, some corner hitherto uncultivated, which I should have tocultivate in order to offer the flowers and fruits of it to the peoplesof English speech. 

And now, no more. 

God give my English readers that inextinguishable thirst for truth whichI desire for myself. 

MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO. 

SALAMANCA, _April, 1921. _

 * * * * *

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Footnotes added by the Translator, other than those which merelysupplement references to writers or their works mentioned in the text, are distinguished by his initials. 

I

THE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE

_Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto_, said the Latin playwright. And I would rather say, _Nullum hominem a me alienum puto_: I am a man;no other man do I deem a stranger. For to me the adjective _humanus_ isno less suspect than its abstract substantive _humanitas_, humanity. Neither "the human" nor "humanity, " neither the simple adjective nor thesubstantivized adjective, but the concrete substantive--man. The man offlesh and bone; the man who is born, suffers, and dies--above all, whodies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks andwills; the man who is seen and heard; the brother, the real brother. 

For there is another thing which is also called man, and he is thesubject of not a few lucubrations, more or less scientific. He is thelegendary featherless biped, the _zôon politikhon_ of Aristotle, the social contractor of Rousseau, the _homo economicus_ of theManchester school, the _homo sapiens_ of Linnæus, or, if you like, thevertical mammal. A man neither of here nor there, neither of this agenor of another, who has neither sex nor country, who is, in brief, merely an idea. That is to say, a no-man. 

The man we have to do with is the man of flesh and bone--I, you, readerof mine, the other man yonder, all of us who walk solidly on the earth. 

And this concrete man, this man of flesh and bone, is at once thesubject and the supreme object of all philosophy, whether certainself-styled philosophers like it or not. 

In most of the histories of philosophy that I know, philosophic systemsare presented to us as if growing out of one another spontaneously, andtheir authors, the philosophers, appear only as mere pretexts. The innerbiography of the philosophers, of the men who philosophized, occupies asecondary place. And yet it is precisely this inner biography thatexplains for us most things. 

It behoves us to say, before all, that philosophy lies closer to poetrythan to science. All philosophic systems which have been constructed asa supreme concord of the final results of the individual sciences havein every age possessed much less consistency and life than those whichexpressed the integral spiritual yearning of their authors. 

And, though they concern us so greatly, and are, indeed, indispensablefor our life and thought, the sciences are in a certain sense moreforeign to us than philosophy. They fulfil a more objective end--that isto say, an end more external to ourselves. They are fundamentally amatter of economics. A new scientific discovery, of the kind calledtheoretical, is, like a mechanical discovery--that of the steam-engine, the telephone, the phonograph, or the aeroplane--a thing which is usefulfor something else. Thus the telephone may be useful to us in enablingus to communicate at a distance with the woman we love. But she, wherefore is she useful to us? A man takes an electric tram to go tohear an opera, and asks himself, Which, in this case, is the moreuseful, the tram or the opera?

Philosophy answers to our need of forming a complete and unitaryconception of the world and of life, and as a result of this conception, a feeling which gives birth to an inward attitude and even to outwardaction. But the fact is that this feeling, instead of being aconsequence of this conception, is the cause of it. Ourphilosophy--that is, our mode of understanding or not understanding theworld and life--springs from our feeling towards life itself. And life, like everything affective, has roots in subconsciousness, perhaps inunconsciousness. 

It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but itis our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhapspathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas. 

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not beendefined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that whichdifferentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weepsor laughs inwardly--but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolvesequations of the second degree. 

And thus, in a philosopher, what must needs most concern us is the man. 

Take Kant, the man Immanuel Kant, who was born and lived at Königsberg, in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of thenineteenth. In the philosophy of this man Kant, a man of heart andhead--that is to say, a man--there is a significant somersault, asKierkegaard, another man--and what a man!--would have said, thesomersault from the _Critique of Pure Reason_ to the _Critique ofPractical Reason_. He reconstructs in the latter what he destroyed inthe former, in spite of what those may say who do not see the manhimself. After having examined and pulverized with his analysis thetraditional proofs of the existence of God, of the Aristotelian God, whois the God corresponding to the _zôon politikon_, the abstractGod, the unmoved prime Mover, he reconstructs God anew; but the God ofthe conscience, the Author of the moral order--the Lutheran God, inshort. This transition of Kant exists already in embryo in the Lutherannotion of faith. 

The first God, the rational God, is the projection to the outwardinfinite of man as he is by definition--that is to say, of the abstractman, of the man no-man; the other God, the God of feeling and volition, is the projection to the inward infinite of man as he is by life, of theconcrete man, the man of flesh and bone. 

Kant reconstructed with the heart that which with the head he hadoverthrown. And we know, from the testimony of those who knew him andfrom his testimony in his letters and private declarations, that the manKant, the more or less selfish old bachelor who professed philosophy atKönigsberg at the end of the century of the Encyclopedia and the goddessof Reason, was a man much preoccupied with the problem--I mean with theonly real vital problem, the problem that strikes at the very root ofour being, the problem of our individual and personal destiny, of theimmortality of the soul. The man Kant was not resigned to die utterly. And because he was not resigned to die utterly he made that leap, thatimmortal somersault, [5] from the one Critique to the other. 

Whosoever reads the _Critique of Practical Reason_ carefully and withoutblinkers will see that, in strict fact, the existence of God is thereindeduced from the immortality of the soul, and not the immortality of thesoul from the existence of God. The categorical imperative leads us to amoral postulate which necessitates in its turn, in the teleological orrather eschatological order, the immortality of the soul, and in orderto sustain this immortality God is introduced. All the rest is thejugglery of the professional of philosophy. 

The man Kant felt that morality was the basis of eschatology, but theprofessor of philosophy inverted the terms. 

Another professor, the professor and man William James, has somewheresaid that for the generality of men God is the provider of immortality. Yes, for the generality of men, including the man Kant, the man James, and the man who writes these lines which you, reader, are reading. 

Talking to a peasant one day, I proposed to him the hypothesis thatthere might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, aConsciousness[6] of the Universe, but that for all that the soul ofevery man may not be immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. Hereplied: "Then wherefore God?" So answered, in the secret tribunal oftheir consciousness, the man Kant and the man James. Only in theircapacity as professors they were compelled to justify rationally anattitude in itself so little rational. Which does not mean, of course, that the attitude is absurd. 

Hegel made famous his aphorism that all the rational is real and all thereal rational; but there are many of us who, unconvinced by Hegel, continue to believe that the real, the really real, is irrational, thatreason builds upon irrationalities. Hegel, a great framer ofdefinitions, attempted with definitions to reconstruct the universe, like that artillery sergeant who said that cannon were made by taking ahole and enclosing it with steel. 

Another man, the man Joseph Butler, the Anglican bishop who lived at thebeginning of the eighteenth century and whom Cardinal Newman declared tobe the greatest man in the Anglican Church, wrote, at the conclusion ofthe first chapter of his great work, _The Analogy of Religion_, thechapter which treats of a future life, these pregnant words: "Thiscredibility of a future life, which has been here insisted upon, howlittle soever it may satisfy our curiosity, seems to answer all thepurposes of religion, in like manner as a demonstrative proof would. Indeed a proof, even a demonstrative one, of a future life, would not bea proof of religion. For, that we are to live hereafter, is just asreconcilable with the scheme of atheism, and as well to be accounted forby it, as that we are now alive is: and therefore nothing can be moreabsurd than to argue from that scheme that there can be no futurestate. "

The man Butler, whose works were perhaps known to the man Kant, wishedto save the belief in the immortality of the soul, and with this objecthe made it independent of belief in God. The first chapter of his_Analogy_ treats, as I have said, of the future life, and the second ofthe government of God by rewards and punishments. And the fact is that, fundamentally, the good Anglican bishop deduces the existence of Godfrom the immortality of the soul. And as this deduction was the goodAnglican bishop's starting-point, he had not to make that somersaultwhich at the close of the same century the good Lutheran philosopher hadto make. Butler, the bishop, was one man and Kant, the professor, another man. 

To be a man is to be something concrete, unitary, and substantive; it isto be a thing--_res_. Now we know what another man, the man BenedictSpinoza, that Portuguese Jew who was born and lived in Holland in themiddle of the seventeenth century, wrote about the nature of things. Thesixth proposition of Part III. Of his _Ethic_ states: _unaquoeque res, quatenus in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur_--that is, Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in itsown being. Everything in so far as it is in itself--that is to say, inso far as it is substance, for according to him substance is _id quod inse est et per se concipitur_--that which is in itself and is conceivedby itself. And in the following proposition, the seventh, of the samepart, he adds: _conatus, quo unaquoeque res in suo esse perseverareconatur, nihil est proeter ipsius rei actualem essentiam_--that is, theendeavour wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being isnothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. This means that youressence, reader, mine, that of the man Spinoza, that of the man Butler, of the man Kant, and of every man who is a man, is nothing but theendeavour, the effort, which he makes to continue to be a man, not todie. And the other proposition which follows these two, the eighth, says: _conatus, quo unaquoeque res in suo esse perseverare conatur, nullum tempus finitum, sed indefinitum involvit_--that is, The endeavourwhereby each individual thing endeavours to persist involves no finitetime but indefinite time. That is to say that you, I, and Spinoza wishnever to die and that this longing of ours never to die is our actualessence. Nevertheless, this poor Portuguese Jew, exiled in the mists ofHolland, could never attain to believing in his own personalimmortality, and all his philosophy was but a consolation which hecontrived for his lack of faith. Just as other men have a pain in handor foot, heart-ache or head-ache, so he had God-ache. Unhappy man! Andunhappy fellow-men!

And man, this thing, is he a thing? How absurd soever the question mayappear, there are some who have propounded it. Not long ago there wentabroad a certain doctrine called Positivism, which did much good andmuch ill. And among other ills that it wrought was the introduction of amethod of analysis whereby facts were pulverized, reduced to a dust offacts. Most of the facts labelled as such by Positivism were really onlyfragments of facts. In psychology its action was harmful. There wereeven scholastics meddling in literature--I will not say philosophersmeddling in poetry, because poet and philosopher are twin brothers, ifnot even one and the same--who carried this Positivist psychologicalanalysis into the novel and the drama, where the main business is togive act and motion to concrete men, men of flesh and bone, and by dintof studying states of consciousness, consciousness itself disappeared. The same thing happened to them which is said often to happen in theexamination and testing of certain complicated, organic, living chemicalcompounds, when the reagents destroy the very body which it was proposedto examine and all that is obtained is the products of itsdecomposition. 

Taking as their starting-point the evident fact that contradictorystates pass through our consciousness, they did not succeed inenvisaging consciousness itself, the "I. " To ask a man about his "I" islike asking him about his body. And note that in speaking of the "I, " Ispeak of the concrete and personal "I, " not of the "I" of Fichte, but ofFichte himself, the man Fichte. 

That which determines a man, that which makes him one man, one and notanother, the man he is and not the man he is not, is a principle ofunity and a principle of continuity. A principle of unity firstly inspace, thanks to the body, and next in action and intention. When wewalk, one foot does not go forward and the other backward, nor, when welook, if we are normal, does one eye look towards the north and theother towards the south. In each moment of our life we entertain somepurpose, and to this purpose the synergy of our actions is directed. Notwithstanding the next moment we may change our purpose. And in acertain sense a man is so much the more a man the more unitary hisaction. Some there are who throughout their whole life follow but onesingle purpose, be it what it may. 

Also a principle of continuity in time. Without entering upon adiscussion--an unprofitable discussion--as to whether I am or am not hewho I was twenty years ago, it appears to me to be indisputable that hewho I am to-day derives, by a continuous series of states ofconsciousness, from him who was in my body twenty years ago. Memory isthe basis of individual personality, just as tradition is the basis ofthe collective personality of a people. We live in memory and bymemory, and our spiritual life is at bottom simply the effort of ourmemory to persist, to transform itself into hope, the effort of our pastto transform itself into our future. 

All this, I know well, is sheer platitude; but in going about in theworld one meets men who seem to have no feeling of their ownpersonality. One of my best friends with whom I have walked and talkedevery day for many years, whenever I spoke to him of this sense of one'sown personality, used to say: "But I have no sense of myself; I don'tknow what that is. "

On a certain occasion this friend remarked to me: "I should like to beSo-and-so" (naming someone), and I said: "That is what I shall never beable to understand--that one should want to be someone else. (To want tobe someone else is to want to cease to be he who one is. ) I understandthat one should wish to have what someone else has, his wealth or hisknowledge; but to be someone else, that is a thing I cannot comprehend. "It has often been said that every man who has suffered misfortunesprefers to be himself, even with his misfortunes, rather than to besomeone else without them. For unfortunate men, when they preserve theirnormality in their misfortune--that is to say, when they endeavour topersist in their own being--prefer misfortune to non-existence. Formyself I can say that as a youth, and even as a child, I remainedunmoved when shown the most moving pictures of hell, for even thennothing appeared to me quite so horrible as nothingness itself. It was afurious hunger of being that possessed me, an appetite for divinity, asone of our ascetics has put it. [7]

To propose to a man that he should be someone else, that he shouldbecome someone else, is to propose to him that he should cease to behimself. Everyone defends his own personality, and only consents to achange in his mode of thinking or of feeling in so far as this change isable to enter into the unity of his spirit and become involved in itscontinuity; in so far as this change can harmonize and integrate itselfwith all the rest of his mode of being, thinking and feeling, and can atthe same time knit itself with his memories. Neither of a man nor of apeople--which is, in a certain sense, also a man--can a change bedemanded which breaks the unity and continuity of the person. A man canchange greatly, almost completely even, but the change must take placewithin his continuity. 

It is true that in certain individuals there occur what are calledchanges of personality; but these are pathological cases, and as suchare studied by alienists. In these changes of personality, memory, thebasis of consciousness, is completely destroyed, and all that is left tothe sufferer as the substratum of his individual continuity, which hasnow ceased to be personal, is the physical organism. For the subject whosuffers it, such an infirmity is equivalent to death--it is notequivalent to death only for those who expect to inherit his fortune, ifhe possesses one! And this infirmity is nothing less than a revolution, a veritable revolution. 

A disease is, in a certain sense, an organic dissociation; it is arebellion of some element or organ of the living body which breaks thevital synergy and seeks an end distinct from that which the otherelements co-ordinated with it seek. Its end, considered in itself--thatis to say, in the abstract--may be more elevated, more noble, moreanything you like; but it is different. To fly and breathe in the airmay be better than to swim and breathe in the water; but if the fins ofa fish aimed at converting themselves into wings, the fish, as a fish, would perish. And it is useless to say that it would end by becoming abird, if in this becoming there was not a process of continuity. I donot precisely know, but perhaps it may be possible for a fish toengender a bird, or another fish more akin to a bird than itself; but afish, this fish, cannot itself and during its own lifetime become abird. 

Everything in me that conspires to break the unity and continuity of mylife conspires to destroy me and consequently to destroy itself. Everyindividual in a people who conspires to break the spiritual unity andcontinuity of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself asa part of that people. What if some other people is better than our own?Very possibly, although perhaps we do not clearly understand what ismeant by better or worse. Richer? Granted. More cultured? Grantedlikewise. Happier? Well, happiness . . . But still, let it pass! Aconquering people (or what is called conquering) while we are conquered?Well and good. All this is good--but it is something different. And thatis enough. Because for me the becoming other than I am, the breaking ofthe unity and continuity of my life, is to cease to be he who I am--thatis to say, it is simply to cease to be. And that--no! Anything ratherthan that!

Another, you say, might play the part that I play as well or better?Another might fulfil my function in society? Yes, but it would not be I. 

"I, I, I, always I!" some reader will exclaim; "and who are you?" Imight reply in the words of Obermann, that tremendous man Obermann: "Forthe universe, nothing--for myself, everything"; but no, I would ratherremind him of a doctrine of the man Kant--to wit, that we ought to thinkof our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does nottouch me alone, it touches you also, grumbling reader, it touches eachand all. Singular judgments have the value of universal judgments, thelogicians say. The singular is not particular, it is universal. 

Man is an end, not a means. All civilization addresses itself to man, toeach man, to each I. What is that idol, call it Humanity or call it whatyou like, to which all men and each individual man must be sacrificed?For I sacrifice myself for my neighbours, for my fellow-countrymen, formy children, and these sacrifice themselves in their turn for theirs, and theirs again for those that come after them, and so on in anever-ending series of generations. And who receives the fruit of thissacrifice?

Those who talk to us about this fantastic sacrifice, this dedicationwithout an object, are wont to talk to us also about the right to live. What is this right to live? They tell me I am here to realize I know notwhat social end; but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am hereto realize myself, to live. 

Yes, yes, I see it all!--an enormous social activity, a mightycivilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, ofmorality, and afterwards, when we have filled the world with industrialmarvels, with great factories, with roads, museums, and libraries, weshall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist--forwhom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?

"Why!" the reader will exclaim again, "we are coming back to what theCatechism says: '_Q_. For whom did God create the world? _A_. For man. '"Well, why not?--so ought the man who is a man to reply. The ant, if ittook account of these matters and were a person, would reply "For theant, " and it would reply rightly. The world is made for consciousness, for each consciousness. 

A human soul is worth all the universe, someone--I know not whom--hassaid and said magnificently. A human soul, mind you! Not a human life. Not this life. And it happens that the less a man believes in thesoul--that is to say in his conscious immortality, personal andconcrete--the more he will exaggerate the worth of this poor transitorylife. This is the source from which springs all that effeminate, sentimental ebullition against war. True, a man ought not to wish todie, but the death to be renounced is the death of the soul. "Whosoeverwill save his life shall lose it, " says the Gospel; but it does not say"whosoever will save his soul, " the immortal soul--or, at any rate, which we believe and wish to be immortal. 

And what all the objectivists do not see, or rather do not wish to see, is that when a man affirms his "I, " his personal consciousness, heaffirms man, man concrete and real, affirms the true humanism--thehumanism of man, not of the things of man--and in affirming man heaffirms consciousness. For the only consciousness of which we haveconsciousness is that of man. 

The world is for consciousness. Or rather this _for_, this notion offinality, and feeling rather than notion, this teleological feeling, isborn only where there is consciousness. Consciousness and finality arefundamentally the same thing. 

If the sun possessed consciousness it would think, no doubt, that itlived in order to give light to the worlds; but it would also and aboveall think that the worlds existed in order that it might give them lightand enjoy itself in giving them light and so live. And it would thinkwell. 

And all this tragic fight of man to save himself, this immortal cravingfor immortality which caused the man Kant to make that immortal leap ofwhich I have spoken, all this is simply a fight for consciousness. Ifconsciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than aflash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothingmore execrable than existence. 

Some may espy a fundamental contradiction in everything that I amsaying, now expressing a longing for unending life, now affirming thatthis earthly life does not possess the value that is given to it. Contradiction? To be sure! The contradiction of my heart that says Yesand of my head that says No! Of course there is contradiction. Who doesnot recollect those words of the Gospel, "Lord, I believe, help thou myunbelief"? Contradiction! Of course! Since we only live in and bycontradictions, since life is tragedy and the tragedy is perpetualstruggle, without victory or the hope of victory, life is contradiction. 

The values we are discussing are, as you see, values of the heart, andagainst values of the heart reasons do not avail. For reasons are onlyreasons--that is to say, they are not even truths. There is a class ofpedantic label-mongers, pedants by nature and by grace, who remind me ofthat man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly diedin the flower of his years, says to him, "Patience, my friend, we allmust die!" Would you think it strange if this father were offended atsuch an impertinence? For it is an impertinence. There are times wheneven an axiom can become an impertinence. How many times may it not besaid--

 _Para pensar cual tú, sólo es preciso no tener nada mas que inteligencia_. [8]

There are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, orwith whatever may be the specific thinking organ; while others thinkwith all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow ofthe bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with thelife. And the people who think only with the brain develop intodefinition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought. And youknow what a professional is? You know what a product of thedifferentiation of labour is?

Take a professional boxer. He has learnt to hit with such economy ofeffort that, while concentrating all his strength in the blow, he onlybrings into play just those muscles that are required for the immediateand definite object of his action--to knock out his opponent. A blowgiven by a non-professional will not have so much immediate, objectiveefficiency; but it will more greatly vitalize the striker, causing himto bring into play almost the whole of his body. The one is the blow ofa boxer, the other that of a man. And it is notorious that the Herculesof the circus, the athletes of the ring, are not, as a rule, healthy. They knock out their opponents, they lift enormous weights, but they dieof phthisis or dyspepsia. 

If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he isabove all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man. Thecultivation of any branch of science--of chemistry, of physics, ofgeometry, of philology--may be a work of differentiated specialization, and even so only within very narrow limits and restrictions; butphilosophy, like poetry, is a work of integration and synthesis, or elseit is merely pseudo-philosophical erudition. 

All knowledge has an ultimate object. Knowledge for the sake ofknowledge is, say what you will, nothing but a dismal begging of thequestion. We learn something either for an immediate practical end, orin order to complete the rest of our knowledge. Even the knowledge thatappears to us to be most theoretical--that is to say, of least immediateapplication to the non-intellectual necessities of life--answers to anecessity which is no less real because it is intellectual, to a reasonof economy in thinking, to a principle of unity and continuity ofconsciousness. But just as a scientific fact has its finality in therest of knowledge, so the philosophy that we would make our own has alsoits extrinsic object--it refers to our whole destiny, to our attitude inface of life and the universe. And the most tragic problem of philosophyis to reconcile intellectual necessities with the necessities of theheart and the will. For it is on this rock that every philosophy thatpretends to resolve the eternal and tragic contradiction, the basis ofour existence, breaks to pieces. But do all men face this contradictionsquarely?

Little can be hoped from a ruler, for example, who has not at some timeor other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with the firstbeginning and the ultimate end of all things, and above all of man, withthe "why" of his origin and the "wherefore" of his destiny. 

And this supreme preoccupation cannot be purely rational, it mustinvolve the heart. It is not enough to think about our destiny: it mustbe felt. And the would-be leader of men who affirms and proclaims thathe pays no heed to the things of the spirit, is not worthy to lead them. By which I do not mean, of course, that any ready-made solution is to berequired of him. Solution? Is there indeed any?

So far as I am concerned, I will never willingly yield myself, norentrust my confidence, to any popular leader who is not penetrated withthe feeling that he who orders a people orders men, men of flesh andbone, men who are born, suffer, and, although they do not wish to die, die; men who are ends in themselves, not merely means; men who must bethemselves and not others; men, in fine, who seek that which we callhappiness. It is inhuman, for example, to sacrifice one generation ofmen to the generation which follows, without having any feeling for thedestiny of those who are sacrificed, without having any regard, not fortheir memory, not for their names, but for them themselves. 

All this talk of a man surviving in his children, or in his works, or inthe universal consciousness, is but vague verbiage which satisfies onlythose who suffer from affective stupidity, and who, for the rest, may bepersons of a certain cerebral distinction. For it is possible to possessgreat talent, or what we call great talent, and yet to be stupid asregards the feelings and even morally imbecile. There have beeninstances. 

These clever-witted, affectively stupid persons are wont to say that itis useless to seek to delve in the unknowable or to kick against thepricks. It is as if one should say to a man whose leg has had to beamputated that it does not help him at all to think about it. And we alllack something; only some of us feel the lack and others do not. Or theypretend not to feel the lack, and then they are hypocrites. 

A pedant who beheld Solon weeping for the death of a son said to him, "Why do you weep thus, if weeping avails nothing?" And the sage answeredhim, "Precisely for that reason--because it does not avail. " It ismanifest that weeping avails something, even if only the alleviation ofdistress; but the deep sense of Solon's reply to the impertinentquestioner is plainly seen. And I am convinced that we should solve manythings if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs, which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joinedtogether in beweeping them and crying aloud to the heavens and callingupon God. And this, even though God should hear us not; but He wouldhear us. The chiefest sanctity of a temple is that it is a place towhich men go to weep in common. A _miserere_ sung in common by amultitude tormented by destiny has as much value as a philosophy. It isnot enough to cure the plague: we must learn to weep for it. Yes, wemust learn to weep! Perhaps that is the supreme wisdom. Why? Ask Solon. 

There is something which, for lack of a better name, we will call thetragic sense of life, which carries with it a whole conception of lifeitself and of the universe, a whole philosophy more or less formulated, more or less conscious. And this sense may be possessed, and ispossessed, not only by individual men but by whole peoples. And thissense does not so much flow from ideas as determine them, even thoughafterwards, as is manifest, these ideas react upon it and confirm it. Sometimes it may originate in a chance illness--dyspepsia, for example;but at other times it is constitutional. And it is useless to speak, aswe shall see, of men who are healthy and men who are not healthy. Apartfrom the fact there is no normal standard of health, nobody has provedthat man is necessarily cheerful by nature. And further, man, by thevery fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparisonwith the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease. 

Among men of flesh and bone there have been typical examples of thosewho possess this tragic sense of life. I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, _René, Obermann_, Thomson, [9] Leopardi, Vigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard--men burdened withwisdom rather than with knowledge. 

And there are, I believe, peoples who possess this tragic sense of lifealso. 

It is to this that we must now turn our attention, beginning with thismatter of health and disease. 

FOOTNOTES:

[5] "_Salto inmortal_. " There is a play here upon the term _saltomortal_, used to denote the dangerous aerial somersault of the acrobat, which cannot be rendered in English. --J. E. C. F. 

[6] "_Conciencia_. " The same word is used in Spanish to denote bothconsciousness and conscience. If the latter is specifically intended, the qualifying adjective "_moral_" or "_religiosa_" is commonlyadded. --J. E. C. F. 

[7] San Juan de los Angeles. 

[8] To be lacking in everything but intelligence is the necessaryqualification for thinking like you. 

[9] James Thomson, author of _The City of Dreadful Night_. 

II. 

THE STARTING-POINT

To some, perhaps, the foregoing reflections may seem to possess acertain morbid character. Morbid? But what is disease precisely? Andwhat is health?

May not disease itself possibly be the essential condition of that whichwe call progress and progress itself a disease?

Who does not know the mythical tragedy of Paradise? Therein dwelt ourfirst parents in a state of perfect health and perfect innocence, andJahwé gave them to eat of the tree of life and created all things forthem; but he commanded them not to taste of the fruit of the tree of theknowledge of good and evil. But they, tempted by the serpent--Christ'stype of prudence--tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge ofgood and evil, and became subject to all diseases, and to death, whichis their crown and consummation, and to labour and to progress. Forprogress, according to this legend, springs from original sin. And thusit was the curiosity of Eve, of woman, of her who is most thrall to theorganic necessities of life and of the conservation of life, thatoccasioned the Fall and with the Fall the Redemption, and it was theRedemption that set our feet on the way to God and made it possible forus to attain to Him and to be in Him. 

Do you want another version of our origin? Very well then. According tothis account, man is, strictly speaking, merely a species of gorilla, orang-outang, chimpanzee, or the like, more or less hydrocephalous. Onceon a time an anthropoid monkey had a diseased offspring--diseased fromthe strictly animal or zoological point of view, really diseased; andthis disease, although a source of weakness, resulted in a positive gainin the struggle for survival. The only vertical mammal at last succeededin standing erect--man. The upright position freed him from thenecessity of using his hands as means of support in walking; he wasable, therefore, to oppose the thumb to the other four fingers, to seizehold of objects and to fashion tools; and it is well known that thehands are great promoters of the intelligence. This same position gaveto the lungs, trachea, larynx, and mouth an aptness for the productionof articulate speech, and speech is intelligence. Moreover, thisposition, causing the head to weigh vertically upon the trunk, facilitated its development and increase of weight, and the head is theseat of the mind. But as this necessitated greater strength andresistance in the bones of the pelvis than in those of species whosehead and trunk rest upon all four extremities, the burden fell uponwoman, the author of the Fall according to Genesis, of bringing forthlarger-headed offspring through a harder framework of bone. And Jahwécondemned her, for having sinned, to bring forth her children in sorrow. 

The gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang, and their kind, must lookupon man as a feeble and infirm animal, whose strange custom it is tostore up his dead. Wherefore?

And this primary disease and all subsequent diseases--are they notperhaps the capital element of progress? Arthritis, for example, infectsthe blood and introduces into it scoriæ, a kind of refuse, of animperfect organic combustion; but may not this very impurity happen tomake the blood more stimulative? May not this impure blood promote amore active cerebration precisely because it is impure? Water that ischemically pure is undrinkable. And may not also blood that isphysiologically pure be unfit for the brain of the vertical mammal thathas to live by thought?

The history of medicine, moreover, teaches us that progress consistsnot so much in expelling the germs of disease, or rather diseasesthemselves, as in accommodating them to our organism and so perhapsenriching it, in dissolving them in our blood. What but this is themeaning of vaccination and all the serums, and immunity from infectionthrough lapse of time?

If this notion of absolute health were not an abstract category, something which does not strictly exist, we might say that a perfectlyhealthy man would be no longer a man, but an irrational animal. Irrational, because of the lack of some disease to set a spark to hisreason. And this disease which gives us the appetite of knowing for thesole pleasure of knowing, for the delight of tasting of the fruit of thetree of the knowledge of good and evil, is a real disease and a tragicone. 

_Pantes anthrôpoi ton eidenai oregontai phusei_, "all mennaturally desire to know. " Thus Aristotle begins his Metaphysic, and ithas been repeated a thousand times since then that curiosity or thedesire to know, which according to Genesis led our first mother to sin, is the origin of knowledge. 

But it is necessary to distinguish here between the desire or appetitefor knowing, apparently and at first sight for the love of knowledgeitself, between the eagerness to taste of the fruit of the tree ofknowledge, and the necessity of knowing for the sake of living. Thelatter, which gives us direct and immediate knowledge, and which in acertain sense might be called, if it does not seem too paradoxical, unconscious knowledge, is common both to men and animals, while thatwhich distinguishes us from them is reflective knowledge, the knowingthat we know. 

Man has debated at length and will continue to debate at length--theworld having been assigned as a theatre for his debates--concerning theorigin of knowledge; but, apart from the question as to what the realtruth about this origin may be, which we will leave until later, it isa certainly ascertained fact that in the apparential order of things, inthe life of beings who are endowed with a certain more or less cloudyfaculty of knowing and perceiving, or who at any rate appear to act asif they were so endowed, knowledge is exhibited to us as bound up withthe necessity of living and of procuring the wherewithal to maintainlife. It is a consequence of that very essence of being, which accordingto Spinoza consists in the effort to persist indefinitely in its ownbeing. Speaking in terms in which concreteness verges upon grossness, itmay be said that the brain, in so far as its function is concerned, depends upon the stomach. In beings which rank in the lowest scale oflife, those actions which present the characteristics of will, thosewhich appear to be connected with a more or less clear consciousness, are actions designed to procure nourishment for the being performingthem. 

Such then is what we may call the historical origin of knowledge, whatever may be its origin from another point of view. Beings whichappear to be endowed with perception, perceive in order to be able tolive, and only perceive in so far as they require to do so in order tolive. But perhaps this stored-up knowledge, the utility in which it hadits origin being exhausted, has come to constitute a fund of knowledgefar exceeding that required for the bare necessities of living. 

Thus we have, first, the necessity of knowing in order to live, andnext, arising out of this, that other knowledge which we might callsuperfluous knowledge or knowledge _de luxe_, which may in its turn cometo constitute a new necessity. Curiosity, the so-called innate desire ofknowing, only awakes and becomes operative after the necessity ofknowing for the sake of living is satisfied; and although sometimes inthe conditions under which the human race is actually living it may notso befall, but curiosity may prevail over necessity and knowledge overhunger, nevertheless the primordial fact is that curiosity sprang fromthe necessity of knowing in order to live, and this is the dead weightand gross matter carried in the matrix of science. Aspiring to beknowledge for the sake of knowledge, to know the truth for the sake ofthe truth itself, science is forced by the necessities of life to turnaside and put it itself at their service. While men believe themselvesto be seeking truth for its own sake, they are in fact seeking life intruth. The variations of science depend upon the variations of humanneeds, and men of science are wont to work, willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly, in the service of the powerful or in that of apeople that demands from them the confirmation of its own desires. 

But is this really a dead weight that impedes the progress of science, or is it not rather its innermost redeeming essence? It is in fact thelatter, and it is a gross stupidity to presume to rebel against the verycondition of life. 

Knowledge is employed in the service of the necessity of life andprimarily in the service of the instinct of personal preservation. Thisnecessity and this instinct have created in man the organs of knowledgeand given them such capacity as they possess. Man sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells that which it is necessary for him to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell in order to preserve his life. The decay or theloss of any of these senses increases the risks with which his life isenvironed, and if it increases them less in the state of society inwhich we are actually living, the reason is that some see, hear, touch, and smell for others. A blind man, by himself and without a guide, couldnot live long. Society is an additional sense; it is the true commonsense. 

Man, then, in his quality of an isolated individual, only sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells in so far as is necessary for living andself-preservation. If he does not perceive colours below red or aboveviolet, the reason perhaps is that the colours which he does perceivesuffice for the purposes of self-preservation. And the senses themselvesare simplifying apparati which eliminate from objective realityeverything that it is not necessary to know in order to utilize objectsfor the purpose of preserving life. In complete darkness an animal, ifit does not perish, ends by becoming blind. Parasites which live in theintestines of other animals upon the nutritive juices which they findready prepared for them by these animals, as they do not need either tosee or hear, do in fact neither see nor hear; they simply adhere, a kindof receptive bag, to the being upon whom they live. For these parasitesthe visible and audible world does not exist. It is enough for them thatthe animals, in whose intestines they live, see and hear. 

Knowledge, then, is primarily at the service of the instinct ofself-preservation, which is indeed, as we have said with Spinoza, itsvery essence. And thus it may be said that it is the instinct ofself-preservation that makes perceptible for us the reality and truth ofthe world; for it is this instinct that cuts out and separates thatwhich exists for us from the unfathomable and illimitable region of thepossible. In effect, that which has existence for us is precisely thatwhich, in one way or another, we need to know in order to existourselves; objective existence, as we know it, is a dependence of ourown personal existence. And nobody can deny that there may not exist, and perhaps do exist, aspects of reality unknown to us, to-day at anyrate, and perhaps unknowable, because they are in no way necessary to usfor the preservation of our own actual existence. 

But man does not live alone; he is not an isolated individual, but amember of society. There is not a little truth in the saying that theindividual, like the atom, is an abstraction. Yes, the atom apart fromthe universe is as much an abstraction as the universe apart from theatom. And if the individual maintains his existence by the instinct ofself-preservation, society owes its being and maintenance to theindividual's instinct of perpetuation. And from this instinct, or ratherfrom society, springs reason. 

Reason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, thedistinguishing mark of man, is a social product. 

It owes its origin, perhaps, to language. We think articulately--_i. E. _, reflectively--thanks to articulate language, and this language arose outof the need of communicating our thought to our neighbours. To think isto talk with oneself, and each one of us talks with himself, thanks toour having had to talk with one another. In everyday life it frequentlyhappens that we hit upon an idea that we were seeking and succeed ingiving it form--that is to say, we obtain the idea, drawing it forthfrom the mist of dim perceptions which it represents, thanks to theefforts which we make to present it to others. Thought is inwardlanguage, and the inward language originates in the outward. Hence itresults that reason is social and common. A fact pregnant withconsequences, as we shall have occasion to see. 

Now if there is a reality which, in so far as we have knowledge of it, is the creation of the instinct of personal preservation and of thesenses at the service of this instinct, must there not be anotherreality, not less real than the former, the creation, in so far as wehave knowledge of it, of the instinct of perpetuation, the instinct ofthe species, and of the senses at the service of this instinct? Theinstinct of preservation, hunger, is the foundation of the humanindividual; the instinct of perpetuation, love, in its most rudimentaryand physiological form, is the foundation of human society. And just asman knows that which he needs to know in order that he may preserve hisexistence, so society, or man in so far as he is a social being, knowsthat which he needs to know in order that he may perpetuate himself insociety. 

There is a world, the sensible world, that is the child of hunger, andthere is another world, the ideal world, that is the child of love. Andjust as there are senses employed in the service of the knowledge of thesensible world, so there are also senses, at present for the most partdormant, for social consciousness has scarcely awakened, employed in theservice of the knowledge of the ideal world. And why must we denyobjective reality to the creations of love, of the instinct ofperpetuation, since we allow it to the creations of hunger or theinstinct of preservation? For if it be said that the former creationsare only the creations of our imagination, without objective value, mayit not equally be said of the latter that they are only the creations ofour senses? Who can assert that there is not an invisible and intangibleworld, perceived by the inward sense that lives in the service of theinstinct of perpetuation?

Human society, as a society, possesses senses which the individual, butfor his existence in society, would lack, just as the individual, man, who is in his turn a kind of society, possesses senses lacking in thecells of which he is composed. The blind cells of hearing, in their dimconsciousness, must of necessity be unaware of the existence of thevisible world, and if they should hear it spoken of they would perhapsdeem it to be the arbitrary creation of the deaf cells of sight, whilethe latter in their turn would consider as illusion the audible worldwhich the hearing cells create. 

We have remarked before that the parasites which live in the intestinesof higher animals, feeding upon the nutritive juices which these animalssupply, do not need either to see or hear, and therefore for them thevisible and audible world does not exist. And if they possessed acertain degree of consciousness and took account of the fact that theanimal at whose expense they live believed in a world of sight andhearing, they would perhaps deem such belief to be due merely to theextravagance of its imagination. And similarly there are socialparasites, as Mr. A. J. Balfour admirably observes, [10] who, receivingfrom the society in which they live the motives of their moral conduct, deny that belief in God and the other life is a necessary foundation forgood conduct and for a tolerable life, society having prepared for themthe spiritual nutriment by which they live. An isolated individual canendure life and live it well and even heroically without in any sortbelieving either in the immortality of the soul or in God, but he livesthe life of a spiritual parasite. What we call the sense of honour is, even in non-Christians, a Christian product. And I will say further, that if there exists in a man faith in God joined to a life of purityand moral elevation, it is not so much the believing in God that makeshim good, as the being good, thanks to God, that makes him believe inHim. Goodness is the best source of spiritual clear-sightedness. 

I am well aware that it may be objected that all this talk of mancreating the sensible world and love the ideal world, of the blind cellsof hearing and the deaf cells of sight, of spiritual parasites, etc. , ismerely metaphor. So it is, and I do not claim to discuss otherwise thanby metaphor. And it is true that this social sense, the creature oflove, the creator of language, of reason, and of the ideal world thatsprings from it, is at bottom nothing other than what we call fancy orimagination. Out of fancy springs reason. And if by imagination isunderstood a faculty which fashions images capriciously, I will ask:What is caprice? And in any case the senses and reason are alsofallible. 

We shall have to enquire what is this inner social faculty, theimagination which personalizes everything, and which, employed in theservice of the instinct of perpetuation, reveals to us God and theimmortality of the soul--God being thus a social product. 

But this we will reserve till later. 

And now, why does man philosophize?--that is to say, why does heinvestigate the first causes and ultimate ends of things? Why does heseek the disinterested truth? For to say that all men have a naturaltendency to know is true; but wherefore?

Philosophers seek a theoretic or ideal starting-point for their humanwork, the work of philosophizing; but they are not usually concerned toseek the practical and real starting-point, the purpose. What is theobject in making philosophy, in thinking it and then expounding it toone's fellows? What does the philosopher seek in it and with it? Thetruth for the truth's own sake? The truth, in order that we may subjectour conduct to it and determine our spiritual attitude towards life andthe universe comformably with it?

Philosophy is a product of the humanity of each philosopher, and eachphilosopher is a man of flesh and bone who addresses himself to othermen of flesh and bone like himself. And, let him do what he will, hephilosophizes not with the reason only, but with the will, with thefeelings, with the flesh and with the bones, with the whole soul and thewhole body. It is the man that philosophizes. 

I do not wish here to use the word "I" in connection withphilosophizing, lest the impersonal "I" should be understood in place ofthe man that philosophizes; for this concrete, circumscribed "I, " this"I" of flesh and bone, that suffers from tooth-ache and finds lifeinsupportable if death is the annihilation of the personalconsciousness, must not be confounded with that other counterfeit "I, "the theoretical "I" which Fichte smuggled into philosophy, nor yet withthe Unique, also theoretical, of Max Stirner. It is better to say "we, "understanding, however, the "we" who are circumscribed in space. 

Knowledge for the sake of knowledge! Truth for truth's sake! This isinhuman. And if we say that theoretical philosophy addresses itself topractical philosophy, truth to goodness, science to ethics, I will ask:And to what end is goodness? Is it, perhaps, an end in itself? Good issimply that which contributes to the preservation, perpetuation, andenrichment of consciousness. Goodness addresses itself to man, to themaintenance and perfection of human society which is composed of men. And to what end is this? "So act that your action may be a pattern toall men, " Kant tells us. That is well, but wherefore? We must needs seekfor a wherefore. 

In the starting-point of all philosophy, in the real starting-point, thepractical not the theoretical, there is a wherefore. The philosopherphilosophizes for something more than for the sake of philosophizing. _Primum vivere, deinde philosophari_, says the old Latin adage; and asthe philosopher is a man before he is a philosopher, he must needs livebefore he can philosophize, and, in fact, he philosophizes in order tolive. And usually he philosophizes either in order to resign himself tolife, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forgethis griefs, or for pastime and amusement. A good illustration of thislast case is to be found in that terrible Athenian ironist, Socrates, ofwhom Xenophon relates in his _Memorabilia_ that he discovered toTheodata, the courtesan, the wiles that she ought to make use of inorder to lure lovers to her house so aptly, that she begged him to actas her companion in the chase, _sunthêratês_, her pimp, in aword. And philosophy is wont, in fact, not infrequently to convertitself into a kind of art of spiritual pimping. And sometimes into anopiate for lulling sorrows to sleep. 

I take at random a book of metaphysics, the first that comes to my hand, _Time and Space, a Metaphysical Essay_, by Shadworth H. Hodgson. I openit, and in the fifth paragraph of the first chapter of the first part Iread:

"Metaphysics is, properly speaking, not a science but a philosophy--thatis, it is a science whose end is in itself, in the gratification andeducation of the minds which carry it on, not in external purpose, suchas the founding of any art conducive to the welfare of life. " Let usexamine this. We see that metaphysics is not, properly speaking, ascience--that is, it is a science whose end is in itself. And thisscience, which, properly speaking, is not a science, has its end initself, in the gratification and education of the minds that cultivateit. But what are we to understand? Is its end in itself or is it togratify and educate the minds that cultivate it? Either the one or theother! Hodgson afterwards adds that the end of metaphysics is not anyexternal purpose, such as that of founding an art conducive to thewelfare of life. But is not the gratification of the mind of him whocultivates philosophy part of the well-being of his life? Let the readerconsider this passage of the English metaphysician and tell me if it isnot a tissue of contradictions. 

Such a contradiction is inevitable when an attempt is made to definehumanly this theory of science, of knowledge, whose end is in itself, ofknowing for the sake of knowing, of attaining truth for the sake oftruth. Science exists only in personal consciousness and thanks to it;astronomy, mathematics, have no other reality than that which theypossess as knowledge in the minds of those who study and cultivate them. And if some day all personal consciousness must come to an end on theearth; if some day the human spirit must return to the nothingness--thatis to say, to the absolute unconsciousness--from whence it sprang; andif there shall no more be any spirit that can avail itself of all ouraccumulated knowledge--then to what end is this knowledge? For we mustnot lose sight of the fact that the problem of the personal immortalityof the soul involves the future of the whole human species. 

This series of contradictions into which the Englishman falls in hisdesire to explain the theory of a science whose end is in itself, iseasily understood when it is remembered that it is an Englishman whospeaks, and that the Englishman is before everything else a man. Perhapsa German specialist, a philosopher who had made philosophy hisspeciality, who had first murdered his humanity and then buried it inhis philosophy, would be better able to explain this theory of a sciencewhose end is in itself and of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. 

Take the man Spinoza, that Portuguese Jew exiled in Holland; read his_Ethic_ as a despairing elegiac poem, which in fact it is, and tell meif you do not hear, beneath the disemburdened and seemingly serenepropositions _more geometrico_, the lugubrious echo of the propheticpsalms. It is not the philosophy of resignation but of despair. And whenhe wrote that the free man thinks of nothing less than of death, andthat his wisdom consists in meditating not on death but on life--homoliber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat et eius sapientia nonmortis, sed vitæ meditatio est (_Ethic_, Part IV. , Prop. LXVII. )--whenhe wrote that, he felt, as we all feel, that we are slaves, and he didin fact think about death, and he wrote it in a vain endeavour to freehimself from this thought. Nor in writing Proposition XLII. Of Part V. , that "happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself, " did hefeel, one may be sure, what he wrote. For this is usually the reason whymen philosophize--in order to convince themselves, even though they failin the attempt. And this desire of convincing oneself--that is to say, this desire of doing violence to one's own human nature--is the realstarting-point of not a few philosophies. 

Whence do I come and whence comes the world in which and by which Ilive? Whither do I go and whither goes everything that environs me? Whatdoes it all mean? Such are the questions that man asks as soon as hefrees himself from the brutalizing necessity of labouring for hismaterial sustenance. And if we look closely, we shall see that beneaththese questions lies the wish to know not so much the "why" as the"wherefore, " not the cause but the end. Cicero's definition ofphilosophy is well known--"the knowledge of things divine and human andof the causes in which these things are contained, " _rerum divinarum ethumanarum, causarumque quibus hæ res continentur_; but in reality thesecauses are, for us, ends. And what is the Supreme Cause, God, but theSupreme End? The "why" interests us only in view of the "wherefore. " Wewish to know whence we came only in order the better to be able toascertain whither we are going. 

This Ciceronian definition, which is the Stoic definition, is also foundin that formidable intellectualist, Clement of Alexandria, who wascanonized by the Catholic Church, and he expounds it in the fifthchapter of the first of his _Stromata_. But this same Christianphilosopher--Christian?--in the twenty-second chapter of his fourth_Stroma_ tells us that for the gnostic--that is to say, theintellectual--knowledge, _gnosis_, ought to suffice, and he adds: "Iwill dare aver that it is not because he wishes to be saved that he, whodevotes himself to knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself, chooses knowledge. For the exertion of the intellect by exercise isprolonged to a perpetual exertion. And the perpetual exertion of theintellect is the essence of an intelligent being, which results from anuninterrupted process of admixture, and remains eternal contemplation, aliving substance. Could we, then, suppose anyone proposing to thegnostic whether he would choose the knowledge of God or everlastingsalvation, and if these, which are entirely identical, were separable, he would without the least hesitation choose the knowledge of God?" MayHe, may God Himself, whom we long to enjoy and possess eternally, deliver us from this Clementine gnosticism or intellectualism!

Why do I wish to know whence I come and whither I go, whence comes andwhither goes everything that environs me, and what is the meaning of itall? For I do not wish to die utterly, and I wish to know whether I amto die or not definitely. If I do not die, what is my destiny? and if Idie, then nothing has any meaning for me. And there are three solutions:(_a_) I know that I shall die utterly, and then irremediable despair, or(_b_) I know that I shall not die utterly, and then resignation, or(_c_) I cannot know either one or the other, and then resignation indespair or despair in resignation, a desperate resignation or a resigneddespair, and hence conflict. 

"It is best, " some reader will say, "not to concern yourself with whatcannot be known. " But is it possible? In his very beautiful poem, _TheAncient Sage_, Tennyson said:

 Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in, Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Thou canst not prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one: Nor canst thou prove thou art immortal, no, Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son, Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself, For nothing worthy proving can be proven, Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, Cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!

Yes, perhaps, as the Sage says, "nothing worthy proving can be proven, nor yet disproven"; but can we restrain that instinct which urges man towish to know, and above all to wish to know the things which may conduceto life, to eternal life? Eternal life, not eternal knowledge, as theAlexandrian gnostic said. For living is one thing and knowing isanother; and, as we shall see, perhaps there is such an oppositionbetween the two that we may say that everything vital is anti-rational, not merely irrational, and that everything rational is anti-vital. Andthis is the basis of the tragic sense of life. 

The defect of Descartes' _Discourse of Method_ lies not in theantecedent methodical doubt; not in his beginning by resolving to doubteverything, a merely intellectual device; but in his resolution to beginby emptying himself of himself, of Descartes, of the real man, the manof flesh and bone, the man who does not want to die, in order that hemight be a mere thinker--that is, an abstraction. But the real manreturned and thrust himself into the philosophy. 

"_Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée_. " Thus begins the_Discourse of Method_, and this good sense saved him. He continuestalking about himself, about the man Descartes, telling us among otherthings that he greatly esteemed eloquence and loved poetry; that hedelighted above all in mathematics because of the evidence and certaintyof its reasons, and that he revered our theology and claimed as much asany to attain to heaven--_et prétendais autant qu'aucun autre à gagnerle ciel_. And this pretension--a very laudable one, I think, and aboveall very natural--was what prevented him from deducing all theconsequences of his methodical doubt. The man Descartes claimed, as muchas any other, to attain to heaven, "but having learned as a thing verysure that the way to it is not less open to the most ignorant than tothe most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead thither arebeyond our intelligence, I did not dare submit them to my feeblereasonings, and I thought that to undertake to examine them and tosucceed therein, I should want some extraordinary help from heaven andneed to be more than man. " And here we have the man. Here we have theman who "did not feel obliged, thank God, to make a profession(_métier_) of science in order to increase his means, and who did notpretend to play the cynic and despise glory. " And afterwards he tells ushow he was compelled to make a sojourn in Germany, and there, shut up ina stove (_poêle_) he began to philosophize his method. But in Germany, shut up in a stove! And such his discourse is, a stove-discourse, andthe stove a German one, although the philosopher shut up in it was aFrenchman who proposed to himself to attain to heaven. 

And he arrives at the _cogito ergo sum_, which St. Augustine had alreadyanticipated; but the _ego_ implicit in this enthymeme, _ego cogito, ergoego sum_, is an unreal--that is, an ideal--_ego_ or I, and its _sum_, its existence, something unreal also. "I think, therefore I am, " canonly mean "I think, therefore I am a thinker"; this being of the "I am, "which is deduced from "I think, " is merely a knowing; this being isknowledge, but not life. And the primary reality is not that I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think. Although thisliving may not be a real living. God! what contradictions when we seekto join in wedlock life and reason!

The truth is _sum, ergo cogito_--I am, therefore I think, although noteverything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above allconsciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousnessof self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge withoutfeeling, without that species of materiality which feeling lends to it?Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the actof knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove have said: "Ifeel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable? To will oneself, is itnot to wish oneself eternal--that is to say, not to wish to die? Whatthe sorrowful Jew of Amsterdam called the essence of the thing, theeffort that it makes to persist indefinitely in its own being, self-love, the longing for immortality, is it not perhaps the primal andfundamental condition of all reflective or human knowledge? And is itnot therefore the true base, the real starting-point, of all philosophy, although the philosophers, perverted by intellectualism, may notrecognize it?

And, moreover, it was the _cogito_ that introduced a distinction which, although fruitful of truths, has been fruitful also of confusions, andthis distinction is that between object, _cogito_, and subject, _sum_. There is scarcely any distinction that does not also lead to confusion. But we will return to this later. 

For the present let us remain keenly suspecting that the longing not todie, the hunger for personal immortality, the effort whereby we tend topersist indefinitely in our own being, which is, according to the tragicJew, our very essence, that this is the affective basis of all knowledgeand the personal inward starting-point of all human philosophy, wroughtby a man and for men. And we shall see how the solution of this inwardaffective problem, a solution which may be but the despairingrenunciation of the attempt at a solution, is that which colours all therest of philosophy. Underlying even the so-called problem of knowledgethere is simply this human feeling, just as underlying the enquiry intothe "why, " the cause, there is simply the search for the "wherefore, "the end. All the rest is either to deceive oneself or to wish to deceiveothers; and to wish to deceive others in order to deceive oneself. 

And this personal and affective starting-point of all philosophy and allreligion is the tragic sense of life. Let us now proceed to considerthis. 

FOOTNOTE:

[10] _The Foundations of Belief, being Notes Introductory to the Studyof Theology_, by the Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour London, 1895: "Soit is with those persons who claim to show by their example thatnaturalism is practically consistent with the maintenance of ethicalideals with which naturalism has no natural affinity. Their spirituallife is parasitic: it is sheltered by convictions which belong, not tothem, but to the society of which they form a part; it is nourished byprocesses in which they take no share. And when those convictions decay, and those processes come to an end, the alien life which they havemaintained can scarce be expected to outlast them" (Chap. Iv. ). 

III

THE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY

Let us pause to consider this immortal yearning for immortality--eventhough the gnostics or intellectuals may be able to say that whatfollows is not philosophy but rhetoric. Moreover, the divine Plato, whenhe discussed the immortality of the soul in his _Phædo_, said that itwas proper to clothe it in legend, _muthologein_. 

First of all let us recall once again--and it will not be for the lasttime--that saying of Spinoza that every being endeavours to persist initself, and that this endeavour is its actual essence, and impliesindefinite time, and that the soul, in fine, sometimes with a clear anddistinct idea, sometimes confusedly, tends to persist in its being withindefinite duration, and is aware of its persistency (_Ethic_, PartIII. , Props. VI. -X. ). 

It is impossible for us, in effect, to conceive of ourselves as notexisting, and no effort is capable of enabling consciousness to realizeabsolute unconsciousness, its own annihilation. Try, reader, to imagineto yourself, when you are wide awake, the condition of your soul whenyou are in a deep sleep; try to fill your consciousness with therepresentation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibilityof it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness. We cannot conceive ourselves as not existing. 

The visible universe, the universe that is created by the instinct ofself-preservation, becomes all too narrow for me. It is like a crampedcell, against the bars of which my soul beats its wings in vain. Itslack of air stifles me. More, more, and always more! I want to bemyself, and yet without ceasing to be myself to be others as well, tomerge myself into the totality of things visible and invisible, toextend myself into the illimitable of space and to prolong myself intothe infinite of time. Not to be all and for ever is as if not to be--atleast, let me be my whole self, and be so for ever and ever. And to bethe whole of myself is to be everybody else. Either all or nothing!

All or nothing! And what other meaning can the Shakespearean "To be ornot to be" have, or that passage in _Coriolanus_ where it is said ofMarcius "He wants nothing of a god but eternity"? Eternity, eternity!--that is the supreme desire! The thirst of eternity is what iscalled love among men, and whosoever loves another wishes to eternalizehimself in him. Nothing is real that is not eternal. 

From the poets of all ages and from the depths of their souls thistremendous vision of the flowing away of life like water has wrungbitter cries--from Pindar's "dream of a shadow, " _skias onar_, toCalderón's "life is a dream" and Shakespeare's "we are such stuff asdreams are made on, " this last a yet more tragic sentence thanCalderón's, for whereas the Castilian only declares that our life is adream, but not that we ourselves are the dreamers of it, the Englishmanmakes us ourselves a dream, a dream that dreams. 

The vanity of the passing world and love are the two fundamental andheart-penetrating notes of true poetry. And they are two notes of whichneither can be sounded without causing the other to vibrate. The feelingof the vanity of the passing world kindles love in us, the only thingthat triumphs over the vain and transitory, the only thing that fillslife again and eternalizes it. In appearance at any rate, for inreality. . . . And love, above all when it struggles against destiny, overwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world ofappearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny isovercome and liberty is law. 

Everything passes! Such is the refrain of those who have drunk, lips tothe spring, of the fountain of life, of those who have tasted of thefruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

To be, to be for ever, to be without ending! thirst of being, thirst ofbeing more! hunger of God! thirst of love eternalizing and eternal! tobe for ever! to be God!

"Ye shall be as gods!" we are told in Genesis that the serpent said tothe first pair of lovers (Gen. Iii. 5). "If in this life only we havehope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, " wrote the Apostle (1Cor. Xv. 19); and all religion has sprung historically from the cult ofthe dead--that is to say, from the cult of immortality. 

The tragic Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that the free man thinks ofnothing less than of death; but this free man is a dead man, free fromthe impulse of life, for want of love, the slave of his liberty. Thisthought that I must die and the enigma of what will come after death isthe very palpitation of my consciousness. When I contemplate the greenserenity of the fields or look into the depths of clear eyes throughwhich shines a fellow-soul, my consciousness dilates, I feel thediastole of the soul and am bathed in the flood of the life that flowsabout me, and I believe in my future; but instantly the voice of mysterywhispers to me, "Thou shalt cease to be!" the angel of Death touches mewith his wing, and the systole of the soul floods the depths of myspirit with the blood of divinity. 

Like Pascal, I do not understand those who assert that they care not afarthing for these things, and this indifference "in a matter thattouches themselves, their eternity, their all, exasperates me ratherthan moves me to compassion, astonishes and shocks me, " and he who feelsthus "is for me, " as for Pascal, whose are the words just quoted, "amonster. "

It has been said a thousand times and in a thousand books thatancestor-worship is for the most part the source of primitive religions, and it may be strictly said that what most distinguishes man from theother animals is that, in one form or another, he guards his dead anddoes not give them over to the neglect of teeming mother earth; he is ananimal that guards its dead. And from what does he thus guard them? Fromwhat does he so futilely protect them? The wretched consciousnessshrinks from its own annihilation, and, just as an animal spirit, newlysevered from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with theworld and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needsdesire to possess another life than that of the world itself. And so theearth would run the risk of becoming a vast cemetery before the deadthemselves should die again. 

When mud huts or straw shelters, incapable of resisting the inclemencyof the weather, sufficed for the living, tumuli were raised for thedead, and stone was used for sepulchres before it was used for houses. It is the strong-builded houses of the dead that have withstood theages, not the houses of the living; not the temporary lodgings but thepermanent habitations. 

This cult, not of death but of immortality, originates and preservesreligions. In the midst of the delirium of destruction, Robespierreinduced the Convention to declare the existence of the Supreme Being and"the consolatory principle of the immortality of the soul, " theIncorruptible being dismayed at the idea of having himself one day toturn to corruption. 

A disease? Perhaps; but he who pays no heed to his disease is heedlessof his health, and man is an animal essentially and substantiallydiseased. A disease? Perhaps it may be, like life itself to which it isthrall, and perhaps the only health possible may be death; but thisdisease is the fount of all vigorous health. From the depth of thisanguish, from the abyss of the feeling of our mortality, we emerge intothe light of another heaven, as from the depth of Hell Dante emerged tobehold the stars once again--

 _e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. _

Although this meditation upon mortality may soon induce in us a sense ofanguish, it fortifies us in the end. Retire, reader, into yourself andimagine a slow dissolution of yourself--the light dimming about you--allthings becoming dumb and soundless, enveloping you in silence--theobjects that you handle crumbling away between your hands--the groundslipping from under your feet--your very memory vanishing as if in aswoon--everything melting away from you into nothingness and youyourself also melting away--the very consciousness of nothingness, merely as the phantom harbourage of a shadow, not even remaining to you. 

I have heard it related of a poor harvester who died in a hospital bed, that when the priest went to anoint his hands with the oil of extremeunction, he refused to open his right hand, which clutched a few dirtycoins, not considering that very soon neither his hand nor he himselfwould be his own any more. And so we close and clench, not our hand, butour heart, seeking to clutch the world in it. 

A friend confessed to me that, foreseeing while in the full vigour ofphysical health the near approach of a violent death, he proposed toconcentrate his life and spend the few days which he calculated stillremained to him in writing a book. Vanity of vanities!

If at the death of the body which sustains me, and which I call mine todistinguish it from the self that is I, my consciousness returns to theabsolute unconsciousness from which it sprang, and if a like fatebefalls all my brothers in humanity, then is our toil-worn human racenothing but a fatidical procession of phantoms, going from nothingnessto nothingness, and humanitarianism the most inhuman thing known. 

And the remedy is not that suggested in the quatrain that runs--

 _Cada vez que considero que me tengo de morir, tiendo la capa en el suelo y no me harto de dormir. _[11]

No! The remedy is to consider our mortal destiny without flinching, tofasten our gaze upon the gaze of the Sphinx, for it is thus that themalevolence of its spell is discharmed. 

If we all die utterly, wherefore does everything exist? Wherefore? It isthe Wherefore of the Sphinx; it is the Wherefore that corrodes themarrow of the soul; it is the begetter of that anguish which gives usthe love of hope. 

Among the poetic laments of the unhappy Cowper there are some lineswritten under the oppression of delirium, in which, believing himself tobe the mark of the Divine vengeance, he exclaims--

 Hell might afford my miseries a shelter. 

This is the Puritan sentiment, the preoccupation with sin andpredestination; but read the much more terrible words of Sénancour, expressive of the Catholic, not the Protestant, despair, when he makeshis Obermann say, "L'homme est périssable. Il se peut; mais périssons enrésistant, et, si le néant nous est réservé, ne faisons pas que ce soitune justice. " And I must confess, painful though the confession be, thatin the days of the simple faith of my childhood, descriptions of thetortures of hell, however terrible, never made me tremble, for I alwaysfelt that nothingness was much more terrifying. He who suffers lives, and he who lives suffering, even though over the portal of his abode iswritten "Abandon all hope!" loves and hopes. It is better to live inpain than to cease to be in peace. The truth is that I could notbelieve in this atrocity of Hell, of an eternity of punishment, nor didI see any more real hell than nothingness and the prospect of it. And Icontinue in the belief that if we all believed in our salvation fromnothingness we should all be better. 

What is this _joie de vivre_ that they talk about nowadays? Our hungerfor God, our thirst of immortality, of survival, will always stifle inus this pitiful enjoyment of the life that passes and abides not. It isthe frenzied love of life, the love that would have life to be unending, that most often urges us to long for death. "If it is true that I am todie utterly, " we say to ourselves, "then once I am annihilated the worldhas ended so far as I am concerned--it is finished. Why, then, should itnot end forthwith, so that no new consciousnesses, doomed to suffer thetormenting illusion of a transient and apparential existence, may comeinto being? If, the illusion of living being shattered, living for themere sake of living or for the sake of others who are likewise doomed todie, does not satisfy the soul, what is the good of living? Our bestremedy is death. " And thus it is that we chant the praises of thenever-ending rest because of our dread of it, and speak of liberatingdeath. 

Leopardi, the poet of sorrow, of annihilation, having lost the ultimateillusion, that of believing in his immortality--

 _Peri l'inganno estremo ch'eterno io mi credei_, spoke to his heart of _l'infinita vanitá del tutto_, and perceived howclose is the kinship between love and death, and how "when love is borndeep down in the heart, simultaneously a languid and weary desire to dieis felt in the breast. " The greater part of those who seek death attheir own hand are moved thereto by love; it is the supreme longing forlife, for more life, the longing to prolong and perpetuate life, thaturges them to death, once they are persuaded of the vanity of thislonging. 

The problem is tragic and eternal, and the more we seek to escape fromit, the more it thrusts itself upon us. Four-and-twenty centuries ago, in his dialogue on the immortality of the soul, the serene Plato--butwas he serene?--spoke of the uncertainty of our dream of being immortaland of the _risk_ that the dream might be vain, and from his own soulthere escaped this profound cry--Glorious is the risk!--_kalosgar o kindunos_, glorious is the risk that we are able to run of oursouls never dying--a sentence that was the germ of Pascal's famousargument of the wager. 

Faced with this risk, I am presented with arguments designed toeliminate it, arguments demonstrating the absurdity of the belief in theimmortality of the soul; but these arguments fail to make any impressionupon me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it isnot with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die--no; Ineither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to live forever and ever and ever. I want this "I" to live--this poor "I" that I amand that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem ofthe duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me. 

I am the centre of my universe, the centre of the universe, and in mysupreme anguish I cry with Michelet, "Mon moi, ils m'arrachent mon moi!"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his ownsoul? (Matt. Xvi. 26). Egoism, you say? There is nothing more universalthan the individual, for what is the property of each is the property ofall. Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it doto sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves toeach. That which we call egoism is the principle of psychic gravity, thenecessary postulate. "Love thy neighbour as thyself, " we are told, thepresupposition being that each man loves himself; and it is not said"Love thyself. " And, nevertheless, we do not know how to love ourselves. 

Put aside the persistence of your own self and ponder what they tellyou. Sacrifice yourself to your children! And sacrifice yourself to thembecause they are yours, part and prolongation of yourself, and they intheir turn will sacrifice themselves to their children, and thesechildren to theirs, and so it will go on without end, a sterilesacrifice by which nobody profits. I came into the world to create myself, and what is to become of all our selves? Live for the True, theGood, the Beautiful! We shall see presently the supreme vanity and thesupreme insincerity of this hypocritical attitude. 

"That art thou!" they tell me with the Upanishads. And I answer: Yes, Iam that, if that is I and all is mine, and mine the totality of things. As mine I love the All, and I love my neighbour because he lives in meand is part of my consciousness, because he is like me, because he ismine. 

Oh, to prolong this blissful moment, to sleep, to eternalize oneself init! Here and now, in this discreet and diffused light, in this lake ofquietude, the storm of the heart appeased and stilled the echoes of theworld! Insatiable desire now sleeps and does not even dream; use andwont, blessed use and wont, are the rule of my eternity; my disillusionshave died with my memories, and with my hopes my fears. 

And they come seeking to deceive us with a deceit of deceits, telling usthat nothing is lost, that everything is transformed, shifts andchanges, that not the least particle of matter is annihilated, not theleast impulse of energy is lost, and there are some who pretend toconsole us with this! Futile consolation! It is not my matter or myenergy that is the cause of my disquiet, for they are not mine if Imyself am not mine--that is, if I am not eternal. No, my longing is notto be submerged in the vast All, in an infinite and eternal Matter orEnergy, or in God; not to be possessed by God, but to possess Him, tobecome myself God, yet without ceasing to be I myself, I who am nowspeaking to you. Tricks of monism avail us nothing; we crave thesubstance and not the shadow of immortality. 

Materialism, you say? Materialism? Without doubt; but either our spiritis likewise some kind of matter or it is nothing. I dread the idea ofhaving to tear myself away from my flesh; I dread still more the idea ofhaving to tear myself away from everything sensible and material, fromall substance. Yes, perhaps this merits the name of materialism; and ifI grapple myself to God with all my powers and all my senses, it is thatHe may carry me in His arms beyond death, looking into these eyes ofmine with the light of His heaven when the light of earth is dimming inthem for ever. Self-illusion? Talk not to me of illusion--let me live!

They also call this pride--"stinking pride" Leopardi called it--and theyask us who are we, vile earthworms, to pretend to immortality; in virtueof what? wherefore? by what right? "In virtue of what?" you ask; and Ireply, In virtue of what do we now live? "Wherefore?"--and wherefore dowe now exist? "By what right?"--and by what right are we? To exist isjust as gratuitous as to go on existing for ever. Do not let us talk ofmerit or of right or of the wherefore of our longing, which is an end initself, or we shall lose our reason in a vortex of absurdities. I do notclaim any right or merit; it is only a necessity; I need it in order tolive. 

And you, who are you? you ask me; and I reply with Obermann, "For theuniverse, nothing; for myself, everything!" Pride? Is it pride to wantto be immortal? Unhappy men that we are! 'Tis a tragic fate, without adoubt, to have to base the affirmation of immortality upon the insecureand slippery foundation of the desire for immortality; but to condemnthis desire on the ground that we believe it to have been proved to beunattainable, without undertaking the proof, is merely supine. I amdreaming . . . ? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken mefrom it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning forimmortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I reallybelieve in it . . . ? And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to askthe reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of theprinciple. 

But these are things which it is impossible to discuss. 

It is related in the book of the Acts of the Apostles how wherever Paulwent the Jews, moved with envy, were stirred up to persecute him. Theystoned him in Iconium and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, in spite of thewonders that he worked therein; they scourged him in Philippi ofMacedonia and persecuted his brethren in Thessalonica and Berea. Hearrived at Athens, however, the noble city of the intellectuals, overwhich brooded the sublime spirit of Plato--the Plato of the gloriousnessof the risk of immortality; and there Paul disputed with Epicureans andStoics. And some said of him, "What doth this babbler (_spermologos_)mean?" and others, "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods"(Acts xvii. 18), "and they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?for thou bringest certain strange things to our ears; we would know, therefore, what these things mean" (verses 19-20). And then follows thatwonderful characterization of those Athenians of the decadence, thosedainty connoisseurs of the curious, "for all the Athenians and strangerswhich were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell orto hear some new thing" (verse 21). A wonderful stroke which depicts forus the condition of mind of those who had learned from the _Odyssey_that the gods plot and achieve the destruction of mortals in order thattheir posterity may have something to narrate!

Here Paul stands, then, before the subtle Athenians, before the_græuli_, men of culture and tolerance, who are ready to welcome andexamine every doctrine, who neither stone nor scourge nor imprison anyman for professing these or those doctrines--here he stands whereliberty of conscience is respected and every opinion is given anattentive hearing. And he raises his voice in the midst of the Areopagusand speaks to them as it was fitting to speak to the cultured citizensof Athens, and all listen to him, agog to hear the latest novelty. Butwhen he begins to speak to them of the resurrection of the dead theirstock of patience and tolerance comes to an end, and some mock him, andothers say: "We will hear thee again of this matter!" intending not tohear him. And a similar thing happened to him at Cæsarea when he camebefore the Roman prætor Felix, likewise a broad-minded and cultured man, who mitigated the hardships of his imprisonment, and wished to hear anddid hear him discourse of righteousness and of temperance; but when hespoke of the judgement to come, Felix said, terrified (_emphobosgenomenos_): "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient seasonI will call for thee" (Acts xxiv. 22-25). And in his audience beforeKing Agrippa, when Festus the governor heard him speak of theresurrection of the dead, he exclaimed: "Thou art mad, Paul; muchlearning hath made thee mad" (Acts xxvi. 24). 

Whatever of truth there may have been in Paul's discourse in theAreopagus, and even if there were none, it is certain that thisadmirable account plainly shows how far Attic tolerance goes and wherethe patience of the intellectuals ends. They all listen to you, calmlyand smilingly, and at times they encourage you, saying: "That'sstrange!" or, "He has brains!" or "That's suggestive, " or "How fine!" or"Pity that a thing so beautiful should not be true!" or "this makes onethink!" But as soon as you speak to them of resurrection and life afterdeath, they lose their patience and cut short your remarks and exclaim, "Enough of this! we will talk about this another day!" And it is aboutthis, my poor Athenians, my intolerant intellectuals, it is about thisthat I am going to talk to you here. 

And even if this belief be absurd, why is its exposition less toleratedthan that of others much more absurd? Why this manifest hostility tosuch a belief? Is it fear? Is it, perhaps, spite provoked by inabilityto share it?

And sensible men, those who do not intend to let themselves be deceived, keep on dinning into our ears the refrain that it is no use giving wayto folly and kicking against the pricks, for what cannot be isimpossible. The manly attitude, they say, is to resign oneself to fate;since we are not immortal, do not let us want to be so; let us submitourselves to reason without tormenting ourselves about what isirremediable, and so making life more gloomy and miserable. Thisobsession, they add, is a disease. Disease, madness, reason . . . Theeverlasting refrain! Very well then--No! I do not submit to reason, andI rebel against it, and I persist in creating by the energy of faith myimmortalizing God, and in forcing by my will the stars out of theircourses, for if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed we should say tothat mountain, "Remove hence, " and it would remove, and nothing would beimpossible to us (Matt. Xvii. 20). 

There you have that "thief of energies, " as he[12] so obtusely calledChrist who sought to wed nihilism with the struggle for existence, andhe talks to you about courage. His heart craved the eternal all whilehis head convinced him of nothingness, and, desperate and mad to defendhimself from himself, he cursed that which he most loved. Because hecould not be Christ, he blasphemed against Christ. Bursting with his ownself, he wished himself unending and dreamed his theory of eternalrecurrence, a sorry counterfeit of immortality, and, full of pity forhimself, he abominated all pity. And there are some who say that his isthe philosophy of strong men! No, it is not. My health and my strengthurge me to perpetuate myself. His is the doctrine of weaklings whoaspire to be strong, but not of the strong who are strong. Only thefeeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desirefor the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal forperpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundanceof life overflows upon the other side of death. 

Before this terrible mystery of mortality, face to face with the Sphinx, man adopts different attitudes and seeks in various ways to consolehimself for having been born. And now it occurs to him to take it as adiversion, and he says to himself with Renan that this universe is aspectacle that God presents to Himself, and that it behoves us to carryout the intentions of the great Stage-Manager and contribute to make thespectacle the most brilliant and the most varied that may be. And theyhave made a religion of art, a cure for the metaphysical evil, andinvented the meaningless phrase of art for art's sake. 

And it does not suffice them. If the man who tells you that he writes, paints, sculptures, or sings for his own amusement, gives his work tothe public, he lies; he lies if he puts his name to his writing, painting, statue, or song. He wishes, at the least, to leave behind ashadow of his spirit, something that may survive him. If the _Imitationof Christ_ is anonymous, it is because its author sought the eternity ofthe soul and did not trouble himself about that of the name. The man ofletters who shall tell you that he despises fame is a lying rascal. OfDante, the author of those three-and-thirty vigorous verses (_Purg. _ xi. 85-117) on the vanity of worldly glory, Boccaccio says that he relishedhonours and pomps more perhaps than suited with his conspicuous virtue. The keenest desire of his condemned souls is that they may be rememberedand talked of here on earth, and this is the chief solace that lightensthe darkness of his Inferno. And he himself confessed that his aim inexpounding the concept of Monarchy was not merely that he might be ofservice to others, but that he might win for his own glory the palm ofso great prize (_De Monarchia_, lib. I. , cap. I. ). What more? Even ofthat holy man, seemingly the most indifferent to worldly vanity, thePoor Little One of Assisi, it is related in the _Legenda Trium Sociorum_that he said: _Adhuc adorabor per totum mundum!_--You will see how Ishall yet be adored by all the world! (II. _Celano_, i. 1). And even ofGod Himself the theologians say that He created the world for themanifestation of His glory. 

When doubts invade us and cloud our faith in the immortality of thesoul, a vigorous and painful impulse is given to the anxiety toperpetuate our name and fame, to grasp at least a shadow of immortality. And hence this tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survivein some way in the memory of others and of posterity. It is thisstruggle, a thousand times more terrible than the struggle for life, that gives its tone, colour, and character to our society, in which themedieval faith in the immortal soul is passing away. Each one seeks toaffirm himself, if only in appearance. 

Once the needs of hunger are satisfied--and they are soon satisfied--thevanity, the necessity--for it is a necessity--arises of imposingourselves upon and surviving in others. Man habitually sacrifices hislife to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boastseven of his weaknesses and his misfortunes, for want of anything betterto boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger. And vanity, what is it buteagerness for survival?

The vain man is in like case with the avaricious--he takes the means forthe end; forgetting the end he pursues the means for its own sake andgoes no further. The seeming to be something, conducive to being it, ends by forming our objective. We need that others should believe in oursuperiority to them in order that we may believe in it ourselves, andupon their belief base our faith in our own persistence, or at least inthe persistence of our fame. We are more grateful to him whocongratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we areto him who recognizes the truth or the goodness of the cause itself. Arabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world andcharacterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with geniusthan hit the mark with the crowd. Rousseau has said in his _Émile_ (bookiv. ): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover thetruth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows wellthat his system is not better founded than the others, but he supportsit because it is his. There is not a single one of them who, if he cameto know the true and the false, would not prefer the falsehood that hehad found to the truth discovered by another. Where is the philosopherwho would not willingly deceive mankind for his own glory? Where is hewho in the secret of his heart does not propose to himself any otherobject than to distinguish himself? Provided that he lifts himself abovethe vulgar, provided that he outshines the brilliance of hiscompetitors, what does he demand more? The essential thing is to thinkdifferently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheistshe would be a believer. " How much substantial truth there is in thesegloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity!

This violent struggle for the perpetuation of our name extends backwardsinto the past, just as it aspires to conquer the future; we contendwith the dead because we, the living, are obscured beneath their shadow. We are jealous of the geniuses of former times, whose names, standingout like the landmarks of history, rescue the ages from oblivion. Theheaven of fame is not very large, and the more there are who enter itthe less is the share of each. The great names of the past rob us of ourplace in it; the space which they fill in the popular memory they usurpfrom us who aspire to occupy it. And so we rise up in revolt againstthem, and hence the bitterness with which all those who seek after famein the world of letters judge those who have already attained it and arein enjoyment of it. If additions continue to be made to the wealth ofliterature, there will come a day of sifting, and each one fears lest hebe caught in the meshes of the sieve. In attacking the masters, irreverent youth is only defending itself; the iconoclast orimage-breaker is a Stylite who erects himself as an image, an _icon_. "Comparisons are odious, " says the familiar adage, and the reason isthat we wish to be unique. Do not tell Fernandez that he is one of themost talented Spaniards of the younger generation, for though he willaffect to be gratified by the eulogy he is really annoyed by it; if, however, you tell him that he is the most talented man in Spain--welland good! But even that is not sufficient: one of the worldwidereputations would be more to his liking, but he is only fully satisfiedwith being esteemed the first in all countries and all ages. The morealone, the nearer to that unsubstantial immortality, the immortality ofthe name, for great names diminish one another. 

What is the meaning of that irritation which we feel when we believethat we are robbed of a phrase, or a thought, or an image, which webelieved to be our own, when we are plagiarized? Robbed? Can it indeedbe ours once we have given it to the public? Only because it is ours weprize it; and we are fonder of the false money that preserves ourimpress than of the coin of pure gold from which our effigy and ourlegend has been effaced. It very commonly happens that it is when thename of a writer is no longer in men's mouths that he most influenceshis public, his mind being then disseminated and infused in the minds ofthose who have read him, whereas he was quoted chiefly when his thoughtsand sayings, clashing with those generally received, needed theguarantee of a name. What was his now belongs to all, and he lives inall. But for him the garlands have faded, and he believes himself tohave failed. He hears no more either the applause or the silent tremorof the heart of those who go on reading him. Ask any sincere artistwhich he would prefer, whether that his work should perish and hismemory survive, or that his work should survive and his memory perish, and you will see what he will tell you, if he is really sincere. When aman does not work merely in order to live and carry on, he works inorder to survive. To work for the work's sake is not work but play. Andplay? We will talk about that later on. 

A tremendous passion is this longing that our memory may be rescued, ifit is possible, from the oblivion which overtakes others. From itsprings envy, the cause, according to the biblical narrative, of thecrime with which human history opened: the murder of Abel by his brotherCain. It was not a struggle for bread--it was a struggle to survive inGod, in the divine memory. Envy is a thousand times more terrible thanhunger, for it is spiritual hunger. If what we call the problem of life, the problem of bread, were once solved, the earth would be turned into ahell by the emergence in a more violent form of the struggle forsurvival. 

For the sake of a name man is ready to sacrifice not only life buthappiness--life as a matter of course. "Let me die, but let my famelive!" exclaimed Rodrigo Arias in _Las Mocedades del Cid_ when he fellmortally wounded by Don Ordóñez de Lara. "Courage, Girolamo, for youwill long be remembered; death is bitter, but fame eternal!" criedGirolamo Olgiati, the disciple of Cola Montano and the murderer, together with his fellow-conspirators Lampugnani and Visconti, ofGaleazzo Sforza, tyrant of Milan. And there are some who covet even thegallows for the sake of acquiring fame, even though it be an infamousfame: _avidus malæ famæ_, as Tacitus says. 

And this erostratism, what is it at bottom but the longing forimmortality, if not for substantial and concrete immortality, at anyrate for the shadowy immortality of the name?

And in this there are degrees. If a man despises the applause of thecrowd of to-day, it is because he seeks to survive in renewed minoritiesfor generations. "Posterity is an accumulation of minorities, " saidGounod. He wishes to prolong himself in time rather than in space. Thecrowd soon overthrows its own idols and the statue lies broken at thefoot of the pedestal without anyone heeding it; but those who win thehearts of the elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship insome shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but capable of preserving themfrom the flood of oblivion. The artist sacrifices the extensiveness ofhis fame to its duration; he is anxious rather to endure for ever insome little corner than to occupy a brilliant second place in the wholeuniverse; he prefers to be an atom, eternal and conscious of himself, rather than to be for a brief moment the consciousness of the wholeuniverse; he sacrifices infinitude to eternity. 

And they keep on wearying our ears with this chorus of Pride! stinkingPride! Pride, to wish to leave an ineffaceable name? Pride? It is likecalling the thirst for riches a thirst for pleasure. No, it is not somuch the longing for pleasure that drives us poor folk to seek money asthe terror of poverty, just as it was not the desire for glory but theterror of hell that drove men in the Middle Ages to the cloister withits _acedia_. Neither is this wish to leave a name pride, but terror ofextinction. We aim at being all because in that we see the only means ofescaping from being nothing. We wish to save our memory--at any rate, our memory. How long will it last? At most as long as the human racelasts. And what if we shall save our memory in God?

Unhappy, I know well, are these confessions; but from the depth ofunhappiness springs new life, and only by draining the lees of spiritualsorrow can we at last taste the honey that lies at the bottom of the cupof life. Anguish leads us to consolation. 

This thirst for eternal life is appeased by many, especially by thesimple, at the fountain of religious faith; but to drink of this is notgiven to all. The institution whose primordial end is to protect thisfaith in the personal immortality of the soul is Catholicism; butCatholicism has sought to rationalize this faith by converting religioninto theology, by offering a philosophy, and a philosophy of thethirteenth century, as a basis for vital belief. This and itsconsequences we will now proceed to examine. 

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Each time that I consider that it is my lot to die, I spread mycloak upon the ground and am never surfeited with sleeping. 

[12] Nietzsche. 

IV

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

Let us now approach the Christian, Catholic, Pauline, or Athanasiansolution of our inward vital problem, the hunger of immortality. 

Christianity sprang from the confluence of two mighty spiritualstreams--the one Judaic, the other Hellenic--each of which had alreadyinfluenced the other, and Rome finally gave it a practical stamp andsocial permanence. 

It has been asserted, perhaps somewhat precipitately, that primitiveChristianity was an-eschatological, that faith in another life afterdeath is not clearly manifested in it, but rather a belief in theproximate end of the world and establishment of the kingdom of God, abelief known as chiliasm. But were they not fundamentally one and thesame thing? Faith in the immortality of the soul, the nature of whichwas not perhaps very precisely defined, may be said to be a kind oftacit understanding or supposition underlying the whole of the Gospel;and it is the mental orientation of many of those who read it to-day, anorientation contrary to that of the Christians from among whom theGospel sprang, that prevents them from seeing this. Without doubt allthat about the second coming of Christ, when he shall come among theclouds, clothed with majesty and great power, to judge the quick and thedead, to open to some the kingdom of heaven and to cast others intoGehenna, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, may beunderstood in a chiliastic sense; and it is even said of Christ in theGospel (Mark ix. I), that there were with him some who should not tasteof death till they had seen the kingdom of God--that is, that thekingdom should come during their generation. And in the same chapter, verse 10, it is said of Peter and James and John, who went up with Jesusto the Mount of Transfiguration and heard him say that he would riseagain from the dead, that "they kept that saying within themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. "And at all events the Gospel was written when this belief, the basis and_raison d'être_ of Christianity, was in process of formation. See Matt. Xxii. 29-32; Mark xii. 24-27; Luke xvi. 22-31; xx. 34-37; John v. 24-29;vi. 40, 54, 58; viii. 51; xi. 25, 56; xiv. 2, 19. And, above all, thatpassage in Matt. Xxvii. 52, which tells how at the resurrection ofChrist "many bodies of the saints which slept arose. "

And this was not a natural resurrection. No; the Christian faith wasborn of the faith that Jesus did not remain dead, but that God raisedhim up again, and that this resurrection was a fact; but this did notpresuppose a mere immortality of the soul in the philosophical sense(see Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, Prolegomena, v. 4). For the firstFathers of the Church themselves the immortality of the soul was not athing pertaining to the natural order; the teaching of the DivineScriptures, as Nimesius said, sufficed for its demonstration, and itwas, according to Lactantius, a gift--and as such gratuitous--of God. But more of this later. 

Christianity sprang, as we have said, from two great spiritualstreams--the Judaic and the Hellenic--each one of which had arrived onits account, if not at a precise definition of, at any rate at adefinite yearning for, another life. Among the Jews faith in anotherlife was neither general nor clear; but they were led to it by faith ina personal and living God, the formation of which faith comprises alltheir spiritual history. 

Jahwé, the Judaic God, began by being one god among many others--theGod of the people of Israel, revealed among the thunders of the tempeston Mount Sinai. But he was so jealous that he demanded that worshipshould be paid to him alone, and it was by way of monocultism that theJews arrived at monotheism. He was adored as a living force, not as ametaphysical entity, and he was the god of battles. But this God ofsocial and martial origin, to whose genesis we shall have to returnlater, became more inward and personal in the prophets, and in becomingmore inward and personal he thereby became more individual and moreuniversal. He is the Jahwé who, instead of loving Israel because Israelis his son, takes Israel for a son because he loves him (Hosea xi. 1). And faith in the personal God, in the Father of men, carries with itfaith in the eternalization of the individual man--a faith which hadalready dawned in Pharisaism even before Christ. 

Hellenic culture, on its side, ended by discovering death; and todiscover death is to discover the hunger of immortality. This longingdoes not appear in the Homeric poems, which are not initial, but final, in their character, marking not the start but the close of acivilization. They indicate the transition from the old religion ofNature, of Zeus, to the more spiritual religion of Apollo--ofredemption. But the popular and inward religion of the Eleusinianmysteries, the worship of souls and ancestors, always persistedunderneath. "In so far as it is possible to speak of a Delphic theology, among its more important elements must be counted the belief in thecontinuation of the life of souls after death in its popular forms, andin the worship of the souls of the dead. "[13] There were the Titanic andthe Dionysiac elements, and it was the duty of man, according to theOrphic doctrine, to free himself from the fetters of the body, in whichthe soul was like a captive in a prison (see Rohde, _Psyche_, "DieOrphiker, " 4). The Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence is an Orphicidea. But the idea of the immortality of the soul was not aphilosophical principle. The attempt of Empedocles to harmonize ahylozoistic system with spiritualism proved that a philosophical naturalscience cannot by itself lead to a corroboration of the axiom of theperpetuity of the individual soul; it could only serve as a support to atheological speculation. It was by a contradiction that the first Greekphilosophers affirmed immortality, by abandoning natural philosophy andintruding into theology, by formulating not an Apollonian but aDionysiac and Orphic dogma. But "an immortality of the soul as such, invirtue of its own nature and condition as an imperishable divine forcein the mortal body, was never an object of popular Hellenic belief"(Rohde, _op. Cit. _). 

Recall the _Phædo_ of Plato and the neo-platonic lucubrations. In themthe yearning for personal immortality already shows itself--a yearningwhich, as it was left totally unsatisfied by reason, produced theHellenic pessimism. For, as Pfleiderer very well observes(_Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtliche Grundlage_, 3. Berlin, 1896), "no people ever came upon the earth so serene and sunny as the Greeks inthe youthful days of their historical existence . . . But no peoplechanged so completely their idea of the value of life. The Hellenismwhich ended in the religious speculations of neo-pythagorism andneo-platonism viewed this world, which had once appeared to it so joyousand radiant, as an abode of darkness and error, and earthly existence asa period of trial which could never be too quickly traversed. " Nirvanais an Hellenic idea. 

Thus Jews and Greeks each arrived independently at the real discoveryof death--a discovery which occasions, in peoples as in men, theentrance into spiritual puberty, the realization of the tragic sense oflife, and it is then that the living God is begotten by humanity. Thediscovery of death is that which reveals God to us, and the death of theperfect man, Christ, was the supreme revelation of death, being thedeath of the man who ought not to have died yet did die. 

Such a discovery--that of immortality--prepared as it was by the Judaicand Hellenic religious processes, was a specifically Christiandiscovery. And its full achievement was due above all to Paul of Tarsus, the hellenizing Jew and Pharisee. Paul had not personally known Jesus, and hence he discovered him as Christ. "It may be said that the theologyof the Apostle Paul is, in general, the first Christian theology. Forhim it was a necessity; it was, in a certain sense, his substitution forthe lack of a personal knowledge of Jesus, " says Weizsäcker (_Dasapostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche_. Freiburg-i. -B. , 1892). He did not know Jesus, but he felt him born again in himself, and thushe could say, "Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth inme. "[14] And he preached the Cross, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, andunto the Greeks foolishness (I Cor. I. 23), and the central doctrine forthe converted Apostle was that of the resurrection of Christ. Theimportant thing for him was that Christ had been made man and had diedand had risen again, and not what he did in his life--not his ethicalwork as a teacher, but his religious work as a giver of immortality. Andhe it was who wrote those immortal words: "Now if Christ be preachedthat He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is noresurrection from the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then is ourpreaching vain, and your faith is also vain. . . . Then they also which arefallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hopein Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (I Cor. Xv. 12-19). 

And it is possible to affirm that thenceforward he who does not believein the bodily resurrection of Christ may be Christophile but cannot bespecifically Christian. It is true that a Justin Martyr could say that"all those are Christians who live in accordance with reason, eventhough they may be deemed to be atheists, as, among the Greeks, Socratesand Heraclitus and other such"; but this martyr, is he a martyr--that isto say a witness--of Christianity? No. 

And it was around this dogma, inwardly experienced by Paul, the dogma ofthe resurrection and immortality of Christ, the guarantee of theresurrection and immortality of each believer, that the whole ofChristology was built up. The God-man, the incarnate Word, came in orderthat man, according to his mode, might be made God--that is, immortal. And the Christian God, the Father of Christ, a God necessarilyanthropomorphic, is He who--as the Catechism of Christian Doctrine whichwe were made to learn by heart at school says--created the world forman, for each man. And the end of redemption, in spite of appearancesdue to an ethical deflection of a dogma properly religious, was to saveus from death rather than from sin, or from sin in so far as sin impliesdeath. And Christ died, or rather rose again, for _me_, for each one ofus. And a certain solidarity was established between God and Hiscreature. Malebranche said that the first man fell _in order that_Christ might redeem us, rather than that Christ redeemed us _because_man had fallen. 

After the death of Paul years passed, and generations of Christianitywrought upon this central dogma and its consequences in order tosafeguard faith in the immortality of the individual soul, and theCouncil of Nicæa came, and with it the formidable Athanasius, whosename is still a battle-cry, an incarnation of the popular faith. Athanasius was a man of little learning but of great faith, and aboveall of popular faith, devoured by the hunger of immortality. And heopposed Arianism, which, like Unitarian and Socinian Protestantism, threatened, although unknowingly and unintentionally, the foundation ofthat belief. For the Arians, Christ was first and foremost a teacher--ateacher of morality, the wholly perfect man, and therefore the guaranteethat we may all attain to supreme perfection; but Athanasius felt thatChrist cannot make us gods if he has not first made himself God; if hisDivinity had been communicated, he could not have communicated it to us. "He was not, therefore, " he said, "first man and then became God; but Hewas first God and then became man in order that He might the betterdeify us (_theopoiêsê_)" (_Orat. _ i. 39). It was not the Logos ofthe philosophers, the cosmological Logos, that Athanasius knew andadored;[15] and thus he instituted a separation between nature andrevelation. The Athanasian or Nicene Christ, who is the Catholic Christ, is not the cosmological, nor even, strictly, the ethical Christ; he isthe eternalizing, the deifying, the religious Christ. Harnack says ofthis Christ, the Christ of Nicene or Catholic Christology, that he isessentially docetic--that is, apparential--because the process of thedivinization of the man in Christ was made in the interests ofeschatology. But which is the real Christ? Is it, indeed, that so-calledhistorical Christ of rationalist exegesis who is diluted for us in amyth or in a social atom?

This same Harnack, a Protestant rationalist, tells us that Arianism orUnitarianism would have been the death of Christianity, reducing it tocosmology and ethics, and that it served only as a bridge whereby thelearned might pass over to Catholicism--that is to say, from reason tofaith. To this same learned historian of dogmas it appears to be anindication of a perverse state of things that the man Athanasius, whosaved Christianity as the religion of a living communion with God, should have obliterated the Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus, whom neither Paul nor Athanasius knew personally, nor yet Harnackhimself. Among Protestants, this historical Jesus is subjected to thescalpel of criticism, while the Catholic Christ lives, the reallyhistorical Christ, he who lives throughout the centuries guaranteeingthe faith in personal immortality and personal salvation. 

And Athanasius had the supreme audacity of faith, that of assertingthings mutually contradictory: "The complete contradiction that existsin the _homoousios_ carried in its train a whole army ofcontradictions which increased as thought advanced, " says Harnack. Yes, so it was, and so it had to be. And he adds: "Dogma took leave for everof clear thinking and tenable concepts, and habituated itself to thecontra-rational. " In truth, it drew closer to life, which iscontra-rational and opposed to clear thinking. Not only are judgementsof worth never rationalizable--they are anti-rational. 

At Nicæa, then, as afterwards at the Vatican, victory rested with theidiots--taking this word in its proper, primitive, and etymologicalsense--the simple-minded, the rude and headstrong bishops, therepresentatives of the genuine human spirit, the popular spirit, thespirit that does not want to die, in spite of whatever reason may say, and that seeks a guarantee, the most material possible, for this desire. 

_Quid ad æternitatem?_ This is the capital question. And the Creed endswith that phrase, _resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturisæculi_--the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. In the cemetery of Mallona, in my native town of Bilbao, there is atombstone on which this verse is carved:

 _Aunque estamos en polvo convertidos, en Ti, Señor, nuestra esperanza fía, que tornaremos a vivir vestidos con la carne y la piel que nos cubria. _[16]

"With the same bodies and souls that they had, " as the Catechism says. So much so, that it is orthodox Catholic doctrine that the happiness ofthe blessed is not perfectly complete until they recover their bodies. They lament in heaven, says our Brother Pedro Malón de Chaide of theOrder of St. Augustine, a Spaniard and a Basque, [17] and "this lamentsprings from their not being perfectly whole in heaven, for only thesoul is there; and although they cannot suffer, because they see God, inwhom they unspeakably delight, yet with all this it appears that theyare not wholly content. They will be so when they are clothed with theirown bodies. "

And to this central dogma of the resurrection in Christ and by Christcorresponds likewise a central sacrament, the axis of popular Catholicpiety--the Sacrament of the Eucharist. In it is administered the body ofChrist, which is the bread of immortality. 

This sacrament is genuinely realist--_dinglich_, as the Germans wouldsay--which may without great violence be translated "material. " It isthe sacrament most genuinely _ex opere operato_, for which issubstituted among Protestants the idealistic sacrament of the word. Fundamentally it is concerned with--and I say it with all possiblerespect, but without wishing to sacrifice the expressiveness of thephrase--the eating and drinking of God, the Eternalizer, the feedingupon Him. Little wonder then if St. Teresa tells us that when she wascommunicating in the monastery of the Incarnation and in the second yearof her being Prioress there, on the octave of St. Martin, and theFather, Fr. Juan de la Cruz, divided the Host between her and anothersister, she thought that it was done not because there was any want ofHosts, but because he wished to mortify her, "for I had told him howmuch I delighted in Hosts of a large size. Yet I was not ignorant thatthe size of the Host is of no moment, for I knew that our Lord is wholeand entire in the smallest particle. " Here reason pulls one way, feelinganother. And what importance for this feeling have the thousand and onedifficulties that arise from reflecting rationally upon the mystery ofthis sacrament? What is a divine body? And the body, in so far as it isthe body of Christ, is it divine? What is an immortal and immortalizingbody? What is substance separated from the accidents? Nowadays we havegreatly refined our notion of materiality and substantiality; but therewere even some among the Fathers of the Church to whom the immaterialityof God Himself was not a thing so clear and definite as it is for us. And this sacrament of the Eucharist is the immortalizing sacrament _parexcellence_, and therefore the axis of popular Catholic piety, and if itmay be so said, the most specifically religious of sacraments. 

For what is specific in the Catholic religion is immortalization and notjustification, in the Protestant sense. Rather is this latter ethical. It was from Kant, in spite of what orthodox Protestants may think ofhim, that Protestantism derived its penultimate conclusions--namely, that religion rests upon morality, and not morality upon religion, as inCatholicism. 

The preoccupation of sin has never been such a matter of anguish, or atany rate has never displayed itself with such an appearance of anguish, among Catholics. The sacrament of Confession contributes to this. Andthere persists, perhaps, among Catholics more than among Protestantsthe substance of the primitive Judaic and pagan conception of sin assomething material and infectious and hereditary, which is cured bybaptism and absolution. In Adam all his posterity sinned, almostmaterially, and his sin was transmitted as a material disease istransmitted. Renan, whose education was Catholic, was right, therefore, in calling to account the Protestant Amiel who accused him of not givingdue importance to sin. And, on the other hand, Protestantism, absorbedin this preoccupation with justification, which in spite of itsreligious guise was taken more in an ethical sense than anything else, ends by neutralizing and almost obliterating eschatology; it abandonsthe Nicene symbol, falls into an anarchy of creeds, into pure religiousindividualism and a vague esthetic, ethical, or cultured religiosity. What we may call "other-worldliness" (_Jenseitigkeit_) was obliteratedlittle by little by "this-worldliness" (_Diesseitigkeit_); and this inspite of Kant, who wished to save it, but by destroying it. To itsearthly vocation and passive trust in God is due the religiouscoarseness of Lutheranism, which was almost at the point of expiring inthe age of the Enlightenment, of the _Aufklärung_, and which pietism, infusing into it something of the religious sap of Catholicism, barelysucceeded in galvanizing a little. Hence the exactness of the remarks ofOliveira Martins in his magnificent _History of Iberian Civilization_, in which he says (book iv. , chap, iii. ) that "Catholicism producedheroes and Protestantism produced societies that are sensible, happy, wealthy, free, as far as their outer institutions go, but incapable ofany great action, because their religion has begun by destroying in theheart of man all that made him capable of daring and nobleself-sacrifice. "

Take any of the dogmatic systems that have resulted from the latestProtestant dissolvent analysis--that of Kaftan, the follower of Ritschl, for example--and note the extent to which eschatology is reduced. Andhis master, Albrecht Ritschl, himself says: "The question regarding thenecessity of justification or forgiveness can only be solved byconceiving eternal life as the direct end and aim of that divineoperation. But if the idea of eternal life be applied merely to ourstate in the next life, then its content, too, lies beyond allexperience, and cannot form the basis of knowledge of a scientific kind. Hopes and desires, though marked by the strongest subjective certainty, are not any the clearer for that, and contain in themselves no guaranteeof the completeness of what one hopes or desires. Clearness andcompleteness of idea, however, are the conditions of comprehendinganything--_i. E. _, of understanding the necessary connection between thevarious elements of a thing, and between the thing and its givenpresuppositions. The Evangelical article of belief, therefore, thatjustification by faith establishes or brings with it assurance ofeternal life, is of no use theologically, so long as this purposiveaspect of justification cannot be verified in such experience as ispossible now" (_Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung_, vol. Iii. , chap. Vii. , 52). All this is very rational, but . . . 

In the first edition of Melanchthon's _Loci Communes_, that of 1521, thefirst Lutheran theological work, its author omits all Trinitarian andChristological speculations, the dogmatic basis of eschatology. And Dr. Hermann, professor at Marburg, the author of a book on the Christian'scommerce with God (_Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott_)--a book thefirst chapter of which treats of the opposition between mysticism andthe Christian religion, and which is, according to Harnack, the mostperfect Lutheran manual--tells us in another place, [18] referring tothis Christological (or Athanasian) speculation, that "the effectiveknowledge of God and of Christ, in which knowledge faith lives, issomething entirely different. Nothing ought to find a place in Christiandoctrine that is not capable of helping man to recognize his sins, toobtain the grace of God, and to serve Him in truth. Until thattime--that is to say, until Luther--the Church had accepted much as_doctrina sacra_ which cannot absolutely contribute to confer upon manliberty of heart and tranquillity of conscience. " For my part, I cannotconceive the liberty of a heart or the tranquillity of a conscience thatare not sure of their perdurability after death. "The desire for thesoul's salvation, " Hermann continues, "must at last have led men to theknowledge and understanding of the effective doctrine of salvation. " Andin his book on the Christian's commerce with God, this eminent Lutherandoctor is continually discoursing upon trust in God, peace ofconscience, and an assurance of salvation that is not strictly andprecisely certainty of everlasting life, but rather certainty of theforgiveness of sins. 

And I have read in a Protestant theologian, Ernst Troeltsch, that in theconceptual order Protestantism has attained its highest reach in music, in which art Bach has given it its mightiest artistic expression. This, then, is what Protestantism dissolves into--celestial music![19] On theother hand we may say that the highest artistic expression ofCatholicism, or at least of Spanish Catholicism, is in the art that ismost material, tangible, and permanent--for the vehicle of sounds isair--in sculpture and painting, in the Christ of Velasquez, that Christwho is for ever dying, yet never finishes dying, in order that he maygive us life. 

And yet Catholicism does not abandon ethics. No! No modern religion canleave ethics on one side. But our religion--although its doctors mayprotest against this--is fundamentally and for the most part acompromise between eschatology and ethics; it is eschatology pressedinto the service of ethics. What else but this is that atrocity of theeternal pains of hell, which agrees so ill with the Paulineapocatastasis? Let us bear in mind those words which the _TheologicaGermanica_, the manual of mysticism that Luther read, puts into themouth of God: "If I must recompense your evil, I must recompense it withgood, for I am and have none other. " And Christ said: "Father, forgivethem, for they know not what they do, " and there is no man who perhapsknows what he does. But it has been necessary, for the benefit of thesocial order, to convert religion into a kind of police system, andhence hell. Oriental or Greek Christianity is predominantlyeschatological, Protestantism predominantly ethical, and Catholicism isa compromise between the two, although with the eschatological elementpreponderating. The most authentic Catholic ethic, monastic asceticism, is an ethic of eschatology, directed to the salvation of the individualsoul rather than to the maintenance of society. And in the cult ofvirginity may there not perhaps be a certain obscure idea that toperpetuate ourselves in others hinders our own personal perpetuation?The ascetic morality is a negative morality. And, strictly, what isimportant for a man is not to die, whether he sins or not. It is notnecessary to take very literally, but as a lyrical, or ratherrhetorical, effusion, the words of our famous sonnet--

 _No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte el cielo que me tienes prometido, _[20]

and the rest that follows. 

The real sin--perhaps it is the sin against the Holy Ghost for whichthere is no remission--is the sin of heresy, the sin of thinking foroneself. The saying has been heard before now, here in Spain, that to bea liberal--that is, a heretic--is worse than being an assassin, a thief, or an adulterer. The gravest sin is not to obey the Church, whoseinfallibility protects us from reason. 

And why be scandalized by the infallibility of a man, of the Pope? Whatdifference does it make whether it be a book that is infallible--theBible, or a society of men--the Church, or a single man? Does it makeany essential change in the rational difficulty? And since theinfallibility of a book or of a society of men is not more rational thanthat of a single man, this supreme offence in the eyes of reason had tobe posited. 

It is the vital asserting itself, and in order to assert itself itcreates, with the help of its enemy, the rational, a complete dogmaticstructure, and this the Church defends against rationalism, againstProtestantism, and against Modernism. The Church defends life. It stoodup against Galileo, and it did right; for his discovery, in itsinception and until it became assimilated to the general body of humanknowledge, tended to shatter the anthropomorphic belief that theuniverse was created for man. It opposed Darwin, and it did right, forDarwinism tends to shatter our belief that man is an exceptional animal, created expressly to be eternalized. And lastly, Pius IX. , the firstPontiff to be proclaimed infallible, declared that he was irreconcilablewith the so-called modern civilization. And he did right. 

Loisy, the Catholic ex-abbé, said: "I say simply this, that the Churchand theology have not looked with favour upon the scientific movement, and that on certain decisive occasions, so far as it lay in their power, they have hindered it. I say, above all, that Catholic teaching has notassociated itself with, or accommodated itself to, this movement. Theology has conducted itself, and conducts itself still, as if it wereself-possessed of a science of nature and a science of history, together with that general philosophy of nature and history whichresults from a scientific knowledge of them. It might be supposed thatthe domain of theology and that of science, distinct in principle andeven as defined by the Vatican Council, must not be distinct inpractice. Everything proceeds almost as if theology had nothing to learnfrom modern science, natural or historical, and as if by itself it hadthe power and the right to exercise a direct and absolute control overall the activities of the human mind" (_Autour d'un Petit Livre_, 1903, p. 211). 

And such must needs be, and such in fact is, the Church's attitude inits struggle with Modernism, of which Loisy was the learned and leadingexponent. 

The recent struggle against Kantian and fideist Modernism is a strugglefor life. Is it indeed possible for life, life that seeks assurance ofsurvival, to tolerate that a Loisy, a Catholic priest, should affirmthat the resurrection of the Saviour is not a fact of the historicalorder, demonstrable and demonstrated by the testimony of history alone?Read, moreover, the exposition of the central dogma, that of theresurrection of Jesus, in E. Le Roy's excellent work, _Dogme etCritique_, and tell me if any solid ground is left for our hope to buildon. Do not the Modernists see that the question at issue is not so muchthat of the immortal life of Christ, reduced, perhaps, to a life in thecollective Christian consciousness, as that of a guarantee of our ownpersonal resurrection of body as well as soul? This new psychologicalapologetic appeals to the moral miracle, and we, like the Jews, seek fora sign, something that can be taken hold of with all the powers of thesoul and with all the senses of the body. And with the hands and thefeet and the mouth, if it be possible. 

But alas! we do not get it. Reason attacks, and faith, which does notfeel itself secure without reason, has to come to terms with it. Andhence come those tragic contradictions and lacerations ofconsciousness. We need security, certainty, signs, and they give us_motiva credibilitatis_--motives of credibility--upon which to establishthe _rationale obsequium_, and although faith precedes reason (_fidespræcedit rationem_), according to St. Augustine, this same learneddoctor and bishop sought to travel by faith to understanding (_per fidemad intellectum_), and to believe in order to understand (_credo utintelligam_). How far is this from that superb expression ofTertullian--_et sepultus resurrexit, certum est quia impossibileest!_--"and he was buried and rose again; it is certain because it isimpossible!" and his sublime _credo quia absurdum!_--the scandal of therationalists. How far from the _il faut s'abêtir_ of Pascal and from the"human reason loves the absurd" of our Donoso Cortés, which he must havelearned from the great Joseph de Maistre!

And a first foundation-stone was sought in the authority of traditionand the revelation of the word of God, and the principle of unanimousconsent was arrived at. _Quod apud multos unum invenitur, non esterratum, sed traditum_, said Tertullian; and Lamennais added, centurieslater, that "certitude, the principle of life and intelligence . . . Is, if I may be allowed the expression, a social product. "[21] But here, asin so many cases, the supreme formula was given by that great Catholic, whose Catholicism was of the popular and vital order, Count Joseph deMaistre, when he wrote: "I do not believe that it is possible to show asingle opinion of universal utility that is not true. "[22] Here you havethe Catholic hall-mark--the deduction of the truth of a principle fromits supreme goodness or utility. And what is there of greater, of moresovereign utility, than the immortality of the soul? "As all isuncertain, either we must believe all men or none, " said Lactantius; butthat great mystic and ascetic, Blessed Heinrich Seuse, the Dominican, implored the Eternal Wisdom for one word affirming that He was love, andwhen the answer came, "All creatures proclaim that I am love, " Seusereplied, "Alas! Lord, that does not suffice for a yearning soul. " Faithfeels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks the support of its enemy, reason. 

And thus scholastic theology was devised, and with it itshandmaiden--_ancilla theologiæ_--scholastic philosophy, and thishandmaiden turned against her mistress. Scholasticism, a magnificentcathedral, in which all the problems of architectonic mechanism wereresolved for future ages, but a cathedral constructed of unbaked bricks, gave place little by little to what is called natural theology and ismerely Christianity depotentialized. The attempt was even made, where itwas possible, to base dogmas upon reason, to show at least that if theywere indeed super-rational they were not contra-rational, and they werereinforced with a philosophical foundation of Aristotelian-Neoplatonicthirteenth-century philosophy. And such is the Thomism recommended byLeo XIII. And now the question is not one of the enforcement of dogmabut of its philosophical, medieval, and Thomist interpretation. It isnot enough to believe that in receiving the consecrated Host we receivethe body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; we must needs negotiate allthose difficulties of transubstantiation and substance separated fromaccidents, and so break with the whole of the modern rational conceptionof substantiality. 

But for this, implicit faith suffices--the faith of the coalheaver, [23]the faith of those who, like St. Teresa (_Vida_, cap. Xxv. 2), do notwish to avail themselves of theology. "Do not ask me the reason ofthat, for I am ignorant; Holy Mother Church possesses doctors who willknow how to answer you, " as we were made to learn in the Catechism. Itwas for this, among other things, that the priesthood was instituted, that the teaching Church might be the depositary--"reservoir instead ofriver, " as Phillips Brooks said--of theological secrets. "The work ofthe Nicene Creed, " says Harnack (_Dogmengeschichte_, ii. 1, cap. Vii. 3), "was a victory of the priesthood over the faith of the Christianpeople. The doctrine of the Logos had already become unintelligible tothose who were not theologians. The setting up of the Niceno-Cappadocianformula as the fundamental confession of the Church made it perfectlyimpossible for the Catholic laity to get an inner comprehension of theChristian Faith, taking as their guide the form in which it waspresented in the doctrine of the Church. The idea became more and moredeeply implanted in men's minds that Christianity was the revelation ofthe unintelligible. " And so, in truth, it is. 

And why was this? Because faith--that is, Life--no longer felt sure ofitself. Neither traditionalism nor the theological positivism of DunsScotus sufficed for it; it sought to rationalize itself. And it soughtto establish its foundation--not, indeed, over against reason, where itreally is, but upon reason--that is to say, within reason--itself. Thenominalist or positivist or voluntarist position of Scotus--that whichmaintains that law and truth depend, not so much upon the essence asupon the free and inscrutable will of God--by accentuating its supremeirrationality, placed religion in danger among the majority of believersendowed with mature reason and not mere coalheavers. Hence the triumphof the Thomist theological rationalism. It is no longer enough tobelieve in the existence of God; but the sentence of anathema falls onhim who, though believing in it, does not believe that His existence isdemonstrable by rational arguments, or who believes that up to thepresent nobody by means of these rational arguments has everdemonstrated it irrefutably. However, in this connection the remark ofPohle is perhaps capable of application: "If eternal salvation dependedupon mathematical axioms, we should have to expect that the most odioushuman sophistry would attack their universal validity as violently as itnow attacks God, the soul, and Christ. "[24]

The truth is, Catholicism oscillates between mysticism, which is theinward experience of the living God in Christ, an intransmittibleexperience, the danger of which, however, is that it absorbs our ownpersonality in God, and so does not save our vital longing--betweenmysticism and the rationalism which it fights against (see Weizsäcker, _op. Cit. _); it oscillates between religionized science andscientificized religion. The apocalyptic enthusiasm changed little bylittle into neo-platonic mysticism, which theology thrust further intothe background. It feared the excesses of the imagination which wassupplanting faith and creating gnostic extravagances. But it had to signa kind of pact with gnosticism and another with rationalism; neitherimagination nor reason allowed itself to be completely vanquished. Andthus the body of Catholic dogma became a system of contradictions, moreor less successfully harmonized. The Trinity was a kind of pact betweenmonotheism and polytheism, and humanity and divinity sealed a peace inChrist, nature covenanted with grace, grace with free will, free willwith the Divine prescience, and so on. And it is perhaps true, asHermann says (_loc. Cit. _), that "as soon as we develop religiousthought to its logical conclusions, it enters into conflict with otherideas which belong equally to the life of religion. " And this it is thatgives to Catholicism its profound vital dialectic. But at what a cost?

At the cost, it must needs be said, of doing violence to the mentalexigencies of those believers in possession of an adult reason. Itdemands from them that they shall believe all or nothing, that theyshall accept the complete totality of dogma or that they shall forfeitall merit if the least part of it be rejected. And hence the result, asthe great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, [25] that in Franceand Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Poperyto absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurddoctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget scepticism inthose who received them without reflection. None are so likely tobelieve too little as those who have begun by believing too much. " Hereis, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! theterrible danger comes from another quarter--from seeking to believe withthe reason and not with life. 

The Catholic solution of our problem, of our unique vital problem, theproblem of the immortality and eternal salvation of the individual soul, satisfies the will, and therefore satisfies life; but the attempt torationalize it by means of dogmatic theology fails to satisfy thereason. And reason has its exigencies as imperious as those of life. Itis no use seeking to force ourselves to consider as super-rational whatclearly appears to us to be contra-rational, neither is it any goodwishing to become coalheavers when we are not coalheavers. Infallibility, a notion of Hellenic origin, is in its essence arationalistic category. 

Let us now consider the rationalist or scientific solution--or, moreproperly, dissolution--of our problem. 

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Erwin Rohde, _Psyche_, "Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube derGriechen. " Tübingen, 1907. Up to the present this is the leading workdealing with the belief of the Greeks in the immortality of the soul. 

[14] Gal. Ii. 20. 

[15] On all relating to this question see, among others, Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, ii. , Teil i. , Buch vii. , cap. I. 

[16]

 Though we are become dust, In thee, O Lord, our hope confides, That we shall live again clad In the flesh and skin that once covered us. 

[17] _Libra de la Conversión de la Magdelena_, part iv. , chap. Ix. 

[18] In his exposition of Protestant dogma in _Systematische christlicheReligion_, Berlin, 1909, one of the series entitled _Die Kultur derGegenwart_, published by P. Hinneberg. 

[19] The common use of the expression _música celestial_ to denote"nonsense, something not worth listening to, " lends it a satiricalbyplay which disappears in the English rendering. --J. E. C. F. 

[20] It is not Thy promised heaven, my God, that moves me to love Thee. (Anonymous, sixteenth or seventeenth century. See _Oxford Book ofSpanish Verse_, No. 106. )

[21] _Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_, part iii. , chap. I. 

[22] _Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg_, x^{me} entretien. 

[23] The allusion is to the traditional story of the coalheaver whom thedevil sought to convince of the irrationality of belief in the Trinity. The coalheaver took the cloak that he was wearing and folded it in threefolds. "Here are three folds, " he said, "and the cloak though threefoldis yet one. " And the devil departed baffled. --J. E. C. F. 

[24] Joseph Pohle, "Christlich Katolische Dogmatik, " in _SystematischeChristliche Religion_, Berlin, 1909. _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_ series. 

[25] "Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered, " 1816, in _TheComplete Works of William Ellery Channing, D. D. _, London, 1884. 

V

THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION

The great master of rationalist phenomenalism, David Hume, begins hisessay "On the Immortality of the Soul" with these decisive words: "Itappears difficult by the mere light of reason to prove the immortalityof the soul. The arguments in favour of it are commonly derived frommetaphysical, moral, or physical considerations. But it is really theGospel, and only the Gospel, that has brought to light life andimmortality. " Which is equivalent to denying the rationality of thebelief that the soul of each one of us is immortal. 

Kant, whose criticism found its point of departure in Hume, attempted toestablish the rationality of this longing for immortality and the beliefthat it imports; and this is the real origin, the inward origin, of his_Critique of Practical Reason_, and of his categorical imperative and ofhis God. But in spite of all this, the sceptical affirmation of Humeholds good. There is no way of proving the immortality of the soulrationally. There are, on the other hand, ways of proving rationally itsmortality. 

It would be not merely superfluous but ridiculous to enlarge here uponthe extent to which the individual human consciousness is dependent uponthe physical organism, pointing out how it comes to birth by slowdegrees according as the brain receives impressions from the outsideworld, how it is temporarily suspended during sleep, swoons, and otheraccidents, and how everything leads us to the rational conjecture thatdeath carries with it the loss of consciousness. And just as before ourbirth we were not, nor have we any personal pre-natal memory, so afterour death we shall cease to be. This is the rational position. 

The designation "soul" is merely a term used to denote the individualconsciousness in its integrity and continuity; and that this soulundergoes change, that in like manner as it is integrated so it isdisintegrated, is a thing very evident. For Aristotle it was thesubstantial form of the body--the entelechy, but not a substance. Andmore than one modern has called it an epiphenomenon--an absurd term. Theappellation phenomenon suffices. 

Rationalism--and by rationalism I mean the doctrine that abides solelyby reason, by objective truth--is necessarily materialist. And let notidealists be scandalized thereby. 

The truth is--it is necessary to be perfectly explicit in thismatter--that what we call materialism means for us nothing else but thedoctrine which denies the immortality of the individual soul, thepersistence of personal consciousness after death. 

In another sense it may be said that, as we know what matter is no morethan we know what spirit is, and as matter is for us merely an idea, materialism is idealism. In fact, and as regards our problem--the mostvital, the only really vital problem--it is all the same to say thateverything is matter as to say that everything is idea, or thateverything is energy, or whatever you please. Every monist system willalways seem to us materialist. The immortality of the soul is saved onlyby the dualist systems--those which teach that human consciousness issomething substantially distinct and different from the othermanifestations of phenomena. And reason is naturally monist. For it isthe function of reason to understand and explain the universe, and inorder to understand and explain it, it is in no way necessary for thesoul to be an imperishable substance. For the purpose of explaining andunderstanding our psychic life, for psychology, the hypothesis of thesoul is unnecessary. What was formerly called rational psychology, inopposition to empirical psychology, is not psychology but metaphysics, and very muddy metaphysics; neither is it rational, but profoundlyirrational, or rather contra-rational. 

The pretended rational doctrine of the substantiality and spiritualityof the soul, with all the apparatus that accompanies it, is born simplyof the necessity which men feel of grounding upon reason theirinexpugnable longing for immortality and the subsequent belief in it. All the sophistries which aim at proving that the soul is substance, simple and incorruptible, proceed from this source. And further, thevery concept of substance, as it was fixed and defined by scholasticism, a concept which does not bear criticism, is a theological concept, designed expressly to sustain faith in the immortality of the soul. 

William James, in the third of the lectures which he devoted topragmatism in the Lowell Institute in Boston, in December, 1906, andJanuary, 1907[26]--the weakest thing in all the work of the famousAmerican thinker, an extremely weak thing indeed--speaks as follows:"Scholasticism has taken the notion of substance from common sense andmade it very technical and articulate. Few things would seem to havefewer pragmatic consequences for us than substances, cut off as we arefrom every contact with them. Yet in one case scholasticism has provedthe importance of the substance-idea by treating it pragmatically. Irefer to certain disputes about the mystery of the Eucharist. Substancehere would appear to have momentous pragmatic value. Since the accidentsof the wafer do not change in the Lord's Supper, and yet it has becomethe very body of Christ, it must be that the change is in the substancesolely. The bread-substance must have been withdrawn and the Divinesubstance substituted miraculously without altering the immediatesensible properties. But though these do not alter, a tremendousdifference has been made--no less a one than this, that we who take thesacrament now feed upon the very substance of Divinity. Thesubstance-notion breaks into life, with tremendous effect, if once youallow that substances can separate from their accidents and exchangethese latter. This is the only pragmatic application of thesubstance-idea with which I am acquainted; and it is obvious that itwill only be treated seriously by those who already believe in the 'realpresence' on independent grounds. "

Now, leaving on one side the question as to whether it is goodtheology--and I do not say good reasoning because all this lies outsidethe sphere of reason--to confound the substance of the body--the body, not the soul--of Christ with the very substance of Divinity--that is tosay, with God Himself--it would appear impossible that one so ardentlydesirous of the immortality of the soul as William James, a man whosewhole philosophy aims simply at establishing this belief on rationalgrounds, should not have perceived that the pragmatic application of theconcept of substance to the doctrine of the Eucharistictransubstantiation is merely a consequence of its anterior applicationto the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. As I explained in thepreceding chapter, the Sacrament of the Eucharist is simply thereflection of the belief in immortality; it is, for the believer, theproof, by a mystical experience, that the soul is immortal and willenjoy God eternally. And the concept of substance was born, above alland before all, of the concept of the substantiality of the soul, andthe latter was affirmed in order to confirm faith in the persistence ofthe soul after its separation from the body. Such was at the same timeits first pragmatic application and its origin. And subsequently wehave transferred this concept to external things. It is because I feelmyself to be substance--that is to say, permanent in the midst of mychanges--that I attribute substantiality to those agents exterior to me, which are also permanent in the midst of their changes--just as theconcept of force is born of my sensation of personal effort in putting athing in motion. 

Read carefully in the first part of the _Summa Theologica_ of St. ThomasAquinas the first six articles of question lxxv. , which discuss whetherthe human soul is body, whether it is something self-subsistent, whethersuch also is the soul of the lower animals, whether the soul is the man, whether the soul is composed of matter and form, and whether it isincorruptible, and then say if all this is not subtly intended tosupport the belief that this incorruptible substantiality of the soulrenders it capable of receiving from God immortality, for it is clearthat as He created it when He implanted it in the body, as St. Thomassays, so at its separation from the body He could annihilate it. And asthe criticism of these proofs has been undertaken a hundred times, it isunnecessary to repeat it here. 

Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to conclude that our soul isa substance from the fact that our consciousness of our identity--andthis within very narrow and variable limits--persists through all thechanges of our body? We might as well say of a ship that put out to seaand lost first one piece of timber, which was replaced by another of thesame shape and dimensions, then lost another, and so on with all hertimbers, and finally returned to port the same ship, with the samebuild, the same sea-going qualities, recognizable by everybody as thesame--we might as well say of such a ship that it had a substantialsoul. Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to infer the simplicityof the soul from the fact that we have to judge and unify our thoughts?Thought is not one but complex, and for the reason the soul is nothingbut the succession of co-ordinated states of consciousness. 

In books of psychology written from the spiritualist point of view, itis customary to begin the discussion of the existence of the soul as asimple substance, separable from the body, after this style: There is inme a principle which thinks, wills, and feels. . . . Now this implies abegging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truththat there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that Ithink, will, and feel. And I--the I that thinks, wills, and feels--amimmediately my living body with the states of consciousness which itsustains. It is my living body that thinks, wills, and feels. How? Howyou please. 

And they proceed to seek to establish the substantiality of the soul, hypostatizing the states of consciousness, and they begin by saying thatthis substance must be simple--that is, by opposing thought toextension, after the manner of the Cartesian dualism. And as Balmes wasone of the spiritualist writers who have given the clearest and mostconcise form to the argument, I will present it as he expounds it in thesecond chapter of his _Curso de Filosofia Elemental_. "The human soul issimple, " he says, and adds: "Simplicity consists in the absence ofparts, and the soul has none. Let us suppose that it has three parts--A, B, C. I ask, Where, then, does thought reside? If in A only, then B andC are superfluous; and consequently the simple subject A will be thesoul. If thought resides in A, B, and C, it follows that thought isdivided into parts, which is absurd. What sort of a thing is aperception, a comparison, a judgement, a ratiocination, distributedamong three subjects?" A more obvious begging of the question cannot beconceived. Balmes begins by taking it for granted that the whole, as awhole, is incapable of making a judgement. He continues: "The unity ofconsciousness is opposed to the division of the soul. When we think, there is a subject which knows everything that it thinks, and this isimpossible if parts be attributed to it. Of the thought that is in A, Band C will know nothing, and so in the other cases respectively. Therewill not, therefore, be _one_ consciousness of the whole thought: eachpart will have its special consciousness, and there will be within us asmany thinking beings as there are parts. " The begging of the questioncontinues; it is assumed without any proof that a whole, as a whole, cannot perceive as a unit. Balmes then proceeds to ask if these parts A, B, and C are simple or compound, and repeats his argument until hearrives at the conclusion that the thinking subject must be a part whichis not a whole--that is, simple. The argument is based, as will be seen, upon the unity of apperception and of judgement. Subsequently heendeavours to refute the hypothesis of a communication of the partsamong themselves. 

Balmes--and with him the _a priori_ spiritualists who seek torationalize faith in the immortality of the soul--ignore the onlyrational explanation, which is that apperception and judgement are aresultant, that perceptions or ideas themselves are components whichagree. They begin by supposing something external to and distinct fromthe states of consciousness, something that is not the living body whichsupports these states, something that is not I but is within me. 

The soul is simple, others say, because it reflects upon itself as acomplete whole. No; the state of consciousness A, in which I think of myprevious state of consciousness B, is not the same as its predecessor. Or if I think of my soul, I think of an idea distinct from the act bywhich I think of it. To think that one thinks and nothing more, is notto think. 

The soul is the principle of life, it is said. Yes; and similarly thecategory of force or energy has been conceived as the principle ofmovement. But these are concepts, not phenomena, not external realities. Does the principle of movement move? And only that which moves hasexternal reality. Does the principle of life live? Hume was right whenhe said that he never encountered this idea of himself--that he onlyobserved himself desiring or performing or feeling something. [27] Theidea of some individual thing--of this inkstand in front of me, of thathorse standing at my gate, of these two and not of any other individualsof the same class--is the fact, the phenomenon itself. The idea ofmyself is myself. 

All the efforts to substantiate consciousness, making it independent ofextension--remember that Descartes opposed thought to extension--are butsophistical subtilties intended to establish the rationality of faith inthe immortality of the soul. It is sought to give the value of objectivereality to that which does not possess it--to that whose reality existsonly in thought. And the immortality that we crave is a phenomenalimmortality--it is the continuation of this present life. 

The unity of consciousness is for scientific psychology--the onlyrational psychology--simply a phenomenal unity. No one can say what asubstantial unity is. And, what is more, no one can say what a substanceis. For the notion of substance is a non-phenomenal category. It is anoumenon and belongs properly to the unknowable--that is to say, according to the sense in which it is understood. But in itstranscendental sense it is something really unknowable and strictlyirrational. It is precisely this concept of substance that anunforewarned mind reduces to a use that is very far from that pragmaticapplication to which William James referred. 

And this application is not saved by understanding it in an idealisticsense, according to the Berkeleyan principle that to be is to beperceived (_esse est percipi_). To say that everything is idea or thateverything is spirit, is the same as saying that everything is matter orthat everything is energy, for if everything is idea or everythingspirit, and if, therefore, this diamond is idea or spirit, just as myconsciousness is, it is not plain why the diamond should not endure forever, if my consciousness, because it is idea or spirit, endures forever. 

George Berkeley, Anglican Bishop of Cloyne and brother in spirit to theAnglican bishop Joseph Butler, was equally as anxious to save the beliefin the immortality of the soul. In the first words of the Preface to his_Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, he tells usthat he considers that this treatise will be useful, "particularly tothose who are tainted with scepticism, or want a demonstration of theexistence and immateriality of God, or the natural immortality of thesoul. " In paragraph cxl. He lays it down that we have an idea, or rathera notion, of spirit, and that we know other spirits by means of our own, from which follows--so in the next paragraph he roundly affirms--thenatural immortality of the soul. And here he enters upon a series ofconfusions arising from the ambiguity with which he invests the termnotion. And after having established the immortality of the soul, almostas it were _per saltum_, on the ground that the soul is not passive likethe body, he proceeds to tell us in paragraph cxlvii. That the existenceof God is more evident than that of man. And yet, in spite of this, there are still some who are doubtful!

The question was complicated by making consciousness a property of thesoul, consciousness being something more than soul--that is to say, asubstantial form of the body, the originator of all the organicfunctions of the body. The soul not only thinks, feels, and wills, butmoves the body and prompts its vital functions; in the human soul areunited the vegetative, animal, and rational functions. Such is thetheory. But the soul separated from the body can have neithervegetative nor animal functions. 

A theory, in short, which for the reason is a veritable contexture ofconfusions. 

After the Renaissance and the restoration of purely rational thought, emancipated from all theology, the doctrine of the mortality of the soulwas re-established by the newly published writings of the second-centuryphilosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias and by Pietro Pomponazzi andothers. And in point of fact, little or nothing can be added to whatPomponazzi has written in his _Tractatus de immortalitate animæ_. It isreason itself, and it serves nothing to reiterate his arguments. 

Attempts have not been wanting, however, to find an empirical supportfor belief in the immortality of the soul, and among these may becounted the work of Frederic W. H. Myers on _Human Personality and itsSurvival of Bodily Death_. No one ever approached more eagerly thanmyself the two thick volumes of this work in which the leading spirit ofthe Society for Psychical Research resumed that formidable mass of datarelating to presentiments, apparitions of the dead, the phenomena ofdreams, telepathy, hypnotism, sensorial automatism, ecstasy, and all therest that goes to furnish the spiritualist arsenal. I entered upon thereading of it not only without that temper of cautious suspicion whichmen of science maintain in investigations of this character, but evenwith a predisposition in its favour, as one who comes to seek theconfirmation of his innermost longings; but for this reason was mydisillusion all the greater. In spite of its critical apparatus it doesnot differ in any respect from medieval miracle-mongering. There is afundamental defect of method, of logic. 

And if the belief in the immortality of the soul has been unable to findvindication in rational empiricism, neither is it satisfied withpantheism. To say that everything is God, and that when we die we returnto God, or, more accurately, continue in Him, avails our longingnothing; for if this indeed be so, then we were in God before we wereborn, and if when we die we return to where we were before being born, then the human soul, the individual consciousness, is perishable. Andsince we know very well that God, the personal and conscious God ofChristian monotheism, is simply the provider, and above all theguarantor, of our immortality, pantheism is said, and rightly said, tobe merely atheism disguised; and, in my opinion, undisguised. And theywere right in calling Spinoza an atheist, for his is the most logical, the most rational, system of pantheism. 

Neither is the longing for immortality saved, but rather dissolved andsubmerged, by agnosticism, or the doctrine of the unknowable, which, when it has professed to wish to leave religious feelings scathless, hasalways been inspired by the most refined hypocrisy. The whole of thefirst part of Spencer's _First Principles_, and especially the fifthchapter entitled "Reconciliation"--that between reason and faith orscience and religion being understood--is a model at the same time ofphilosophical superficiality and religious insincerity, of the mostrefined British cant. The unknowable, if it is something more than themerely hitherto unknown, is but a purely negative concept, a concept oflimitation. And upon this foundation no human feeling can be built up. 

The science of religion, on the other hand, of religion considered as anindividual and social psychic phenomenon irrespective of thetranscendental objective validity of religious affirmations, is ascience which, in explaining the origin of the belief that the soul issomething that can live disjoined from the body, has destroyed therationality of this belief. However much the religious man may repeatwith Schleiermacher, "Science can teach thee nothing; it is for scienceto learn from thee, " inwardly he thinks otherwise. 

From whatever side the matter is regarded, it is always found thatreason confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradictsit. And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy oflife. 

A terrible thing is intelligence. It tends to death as memory tends tostability. The living, the absolutely unstable, the absolutelyindividual, is, strictly, unintelligible. Logic tends to reduceeverything to identities and genera, to each representation having nomore than one single and self-same content in whatever place, time, orrelation it may occur to us. And there is nothing that remains the samefor two successive moments of its existence. My idea of God is differenteach time that I conceive it. Identity, which is death, is the goal ofthe intellect. The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapesit; it seeks to congeal the flowing stream in blocks of ice; it seeks toarrest it. In order to analyze a body it is necessary to extenuate ordestroy it. In order to understand anything it is necessary to kill it, to lay it out rigid in the mind. Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them. Worms also feed upon corpses. Myown thoughts, tumultuous and agitated in the innermost recesses of mysoul, once they are torn from their roots in the heart, poured out on tothis paper and there fixed in unalterable shape, are already only thecorpses of thoughts. How, then, shall reason open its portals to therevelation of life? It is a tragic combat--it is the very essence oftragedy--this combat of life with reason. And truth? Is truth somethingthat is lived or that is comprehended?

It is only necessary to read the terrible _Parmenides_ of Plato toarrive at his tragic conclusion that "the one is and is not, and bothitself and others, in relation to themselves and one another, are andare not, and appear to be and appear not to be. " All that is vital isirrational, and all that is rational is anti-vital, for reason isessentially sceptical. 

The rational, in effect, is simply the relational; reason is limited torelating irrational elements. Mathematics is the only perfect science, inasmuch as it adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides numbers, but notreal and substantial things, inasmuch as it is the most formal of thesciences. Who can extract the cube root of an ash-tree?

Nevertheless we need logic, this terrible power, in order to communicatethoughts and perceptions and even in order to think and perceive, for wethink with words, we perceive with forms. To think is to converse withoneself; and speech is social, and social are thought and logic. But maythey not perhaps possess a content, an individual matter, incommunicableand untranslatable? And may not this be the source of their power?

The truth is that man, the prisoner of logic, without which he cannotthink, has always sought to make logic subservient to his desires, andprincipally to his fundamental desire. He has always sought to hold fastto logic, and especially in the Middle Ages, in the interests oftheology and jurisprudence, both of which based themselves on what wasestablished by authority. It was not until very much later that logicpropounded the problem of knowledge, the problem of its own validity, the scrutiny of the metalogical foundations. 

"The Western theology, " Dean Stanley wrote, "is essentially logical inform and based on law. The Eastern theology is rhetorical in form andbased on philosophy. The Latin divine succeeded to the Roman advocate. The Oriental divine succeeded to the Grecian sophist. "[28]

And all the laboured arguments in support of our hunger of immortality, which pretend to be grounded on reason or logic, are merely advocacy andsophistry. 

The property and characteristic of advocacy is, in effect, to make useof logic in the interests of a thesis that is to be defended, while, onthe other hand, the strictly scientific method proceeds from the facts, the data, presented to us by reality, in order that it may arrive, ornot arrive, as the case may be, at a certain conclusion. What isimportant is to define the problem clearly, whence it follows thatprogress consists not seldom in undoing what has been done. Advocacyalways supposes a _petitio principii_, and its arguments are _adprobandum_. And theology that pretends to be rational is nothing butadvocacy. 

Theology proceeds from dogma, and dogma, _dogma_, in itsprimitive and most direct sense, signifies a decree, something akin tothe Latin _placitum_, that which has seemed to the legislative authorityfitting to be law. This juridical concept is the starting-point oftheology. For the theologian, as for the advocate, dogma, law, issomething given--a starting-point which admits of discussion only inrespect of its application and its most exact interpretation. Hence itfollows that the theological or advocatory spirit is in its principledogmatical, while the strictly scientific and purely rational spirit issceptical, _skeptikos_--that is, investigative. It is so at leastin its principle, for there is the other sense of the term scepticism, that which is most usual to-day, that of a system of doubt, suspicion, and uncertainty, and this has arisen from the theological or advocatoryuse of reason, from the abuse of dogmatism. The endeavour to apply thelaw of authority, the _placitum_, the dogma, to different and sometimescontraposed practical necessities, is what has engendered the scepticismof doubt. It is advocacy, or what amounts to the same thing, theology, that teaches the distrust of reason--not true science, not the scienceof investigation, sceptical in the primitive and direct meaning of theword, which hastens towards no predetermined solution nor proceeds saveby the testing of hypotheses. 

Take the _Summa Theologica_ of St. Thomas, the classical monument of thetheology--that is, of the advocacy--of Catholicism, and open it whereyou please. First comes the thesis--_utrum_ . . . Whether such a thing bethus or otherwise; then the objections--_ad primum sic proceditur_; nextthe answers to these objections--_sed contra est_ . . . Or _respondeodicendum_. . . . Pure advocacy! And underlying many, perhaps most, of itsarguments you will find a logical fallacy which may be expressed _morescholastico_ by this syllogism: I do not understand this fact save bygiving it this explanation; it is thus that I must understand it, therefore this must be its explanation. The alternative being that I amleft without any understanding of it at all. True science teaches, aboveall, to doubt and to be ignorant; advocacy neither doubts nor believesthat it does not know. It requires a solution. 

To the mentality that assumes, more or less consciously, that we must ofnecessity find a solution to every problem, belongs the argument basedon the disastrous consequences of a thing. Take any book ofapologetics--that is to say, of theological advocacy--and you will seehow many times you will meet with this phrase--"the disastrousconsequences of this doctrine. " Now the disastrous consequences of adoctrine prove at most that the doctrine is disastrous, but not that itis false, for there is no proof that the true is necessarily that whichsuits us best. The identification of the true and the good is but apious wish. In his _Études sur Blaise Pascal_, A. Vinet says: "Of thetwo needs that unceasingly belabour human nature, that of happiness isnot only the more universally felt and the more constantly experienced, but it is also the more imperious. And this need is not only of thesenses; it is intellectual. It is not only for the _soul_; it is for the_mind_ that happiness is a necessity. Happiness forms a part of truth. "This last proposition--_le bonheur fait partie de la verité_--is aproposition of pure advocacy, but not of science or of pure reason. Itwould be better to say that truth forms a part of happiness in aTertullianesque sense, in the sense of _credo quia absurdum_, whichmeans actually _credo quia consolans_--I believe because it is a thingconsoling to me. 

No, for reason, truth is that of which it can be proved that it is, thatit exists, whether it console us or not. And reason is certainly not aconsoling faculty. That terrible Latin poet Lucretius, whose apparentserenity and Epicurean _ataraxia_ conceal so much despair, said thatpiety consists in the power to contemplate all things with a serenesoul--_pacata posse mente omnia tueri_. And it was the same Lucretiuswho wrote that religion can persuade us into so great evils--_tantumreligio potuit suadere malorum_. And it is true that religion--above allthe Christian religion--has been, as the Apostle says, to the Jews astumbling-block, and to the intellectuals foolishness. [29] The Christianreligion, the religion of the immortality of the soul, was called byTacitus a pernicious superstition (_exitialis superstitio_), and heasserted that it involved a hatred of mankind (_odium generis humani_). 

Speaking of the age in which these men lived, the most genuinelyrationalistic age in the world's history, Flaubert, writing to MadameRoger des Genettes, uttered these pregnant words: "You are right; wemust speak with respect of Lucretius; I see no one who can compare withhim except Byron, and Byron has not his gravity nor the sincerity of hissadness. The melancholy of the ancients seems to me more profound thanthat of the moderns, who all more or less presuppose an immortality onthe yonder side of the _black hole_. But for the ancients this blackhole was the infinite itself; the procession of their dreams is imagedagainst a background of immutable ebony. The gods being no more andChrist being not yet, there was between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius aunique moment in which man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find thisgrandeur; but what renders Lucretius intolerable is his physics, whichhe gives as if positive. If he is weak, it is because he did not doubtenough; he wished to explain, to arrive at a conclusion!"[30]

Yes, Lucretius wished to arrive at a conclusion, a solution, and, whatis worse, he wished to find consolation in reason. For there is also ananti-theological advocacy, and an _odium anti-theologicum_. 

Many, very many, men of science, the majority of those who callthemselves rationalists, are afflicted by it. 

The rationalist acts rationally--that is to say, he does not speak outof his part--so long as he confines himself to denying that reasonsatisfies our vital hunger for immortality; but, furious at not beingable to believe, he soon becomes a prey to the vindictiveness of the_odium anti-theologicum_, and exclaims with the Pharisees: "This peoplewho knoweth not the law are cursed. " There is much truth in these wordsof Soloviev: "I have a foreboding of the near approach of a time whenChristians will gather together again in the Catacombs, because of thepersecution of the faith--a persecution less brutal, perhaps, than thatof Nero's day, but not less refined in its severity, consummated bymendacity, derision, and all the hypocrisies. "

The anti-theological hate, the scientificist--I do not sayscientific--fury, is manifest. Consider, not the more detachedscientific investigators, those who know how to doubt, but the fanaticsof rationalism, and observe with what gross brutality they speak offaith. Vogt considered it probable that the cranial structure of theApostles was of a pronounced simian character; of the indecencies ofHaeckel, that supreme incomprehender, there is no need to speak, nor yetof those of Büchner; even Virchow is not free from them. And others workwith more subtilty. There are people who seem not to be content withnot believing that there is another life, or rather, with believing thatthere is none, but who are vexed and hurt that others should believe init or even should wish that it might exist. And this attitude is ascontemptible as that is worthy of respect which characterizes those who, though urged by the need they have of it to believe in another life, areunable to believe. But of this most noble attitude of the spirit, themost profound, the most human, and the most fruitful, the attitude ofdespair, we will speak later on. 

And the rationalists who do not succumb to the anti-theological fury arebent on convincing men that there are motives for living andconsolations for having been born, even though there shall come a time, at the end of some tens or hundreds or millions of centuries, when allhuman consciousness shall have ceased to exist. And these motives forliving and working, this thing which some call humanism, are the amazingproducts of the affective and emotional hollowness of rationalism and ofits stupendous hypocrisy--a hypocrisy bent on sacrificing sincerity toveracity, and sworn not to confess that reason is a dissolvent anddisconsolatory power. 

Must I repeat again what I have already said about all this business ofmanufacturing culture, of progressing, of realizing good, truth, andbeauty, of establishing justice on earth, of ameliorating life for thosewho shall come after us, of subserving I know not what destiny, and allthis without our taking thought for the ultimate end of each one of us?Must I again declare to you the supreme vacuity of culture, of science, of art, of good, of truth, of beauty, of justice . . . Of all thesebeautiful conceptions, if at the last, in four days or in four millionsof centuries--it matters not which--no human consciousness shall existto appropriate this civilization, this science, art, good, truth, beauty, justice, and all the rest?

Many and very various have been the rationalist devices--more or lessrational--by means of which from the days of the Epicureans and theStoics it has been sought to discover rational consolation in truth andto convince men, although those who sought so to do remained themselvesunconvinced, that there are motives for working and lures for living, even though the human consciousness be destined some day to disappear. 

The Epicurean attitude, the extreme and grossest expression of which is"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, " or the Horatian _carpediem_, which may be rendered by "Live for the day, " does not differ inits essence from the Stoic attitude with its "Accomplish what the moralconscience dictates to thee, and afterward let it be as it may be. " Bothattitudes have a common base; and pleasure for pleasure's sake comes tothe same as duty for duty's sake. 

Spinoza, the most logical and consistent of atheists--I mean of thosewho deny the persistence of individual consciousness through indefinitefuture time--and at the same time the most pious, Spinoza devoted thefifth and last part of his _Ethic_ to elucidating the path that leads toliberty and to determining the concept of happiness. The concept!Concept, not feeling! For Spinoza, who was a terrible intellectualist, happiness (_beatitudo_) is a concept, and the love of God anintellectual love. After establishing in proposition xxi. Of the fifthpart that "the mind can imagine nothing, neither can it rememberanything that is past, save during the continuance of the body"--whichis equivalent to denying the immortality of the soul, since a soulwhich, disjoined from the body in which it lived, does not remember itspast, is neither immortal nor is it a soul--he goes on to affirm inproposition xxiii. That "the human mind cannot be absolutely destroyedwith the body, but there remains of it something which is _eternal_, "and this eternity of the mind is a certain mode of thinking. But do notlet yourselves be deceived; there is no such eternity of the individualmind. Everything is _sub æternitatis specie_--that is to say, pureillusion. Nothing could be more dreary, nothing more desolating, nothingmore anti-vital than this happiness, this _beatitudo_, of Spinoza, thatconsists in the intellectual love of the mind towards God, which isnothing else but the very love with which God loves Himself (prop, xxxvi. ). Our happiness--that is to say, our liberty--consists in theconstant and eternal love of God towards men. So affirms the corollaryto this thirty-sixth proposition. And all this in order to arrive at theconclusion, which is the final and crowning proposition of the whole_Ethic_, that happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. The everlasting refrain! Or, to put it plainly, we proceed from God andto God we return, which, translated into concrete language, the languageof life and feeling, means that my personal consciousness sprang fromnothingness, from my unconsciousness, and to nothingness it will return. 

And this most dreary and desolating voice of Spinoza is the very voiceof reason. And the liberty of which he tells us is a terrible liberty. And against Spinoza and his doctrine of happiness there is only oneirresistible argument, the argument _ad hominem_. Was he happy, BenedictSpinoza, while, to allay his inner unhappiness, he was discoursing ofhappiness? Was he free?

In the corollary to proposition xli. Of this same final and most tragicpart of that tremendous tragedy of his _Ethic_, the poor desperate Jewof Amsterdam discourses of the common persuasion of the vulgar of thetruth of eternal life. Let us hear what he says: "It would appear thatthey esteem piety and religion--and, indeed, all that is referred tofortitude or strength of mind--as burdens which they expect to lay downafter death, when they hope to receive a reward for their servitude, notfor their piety and religion in this life. Nor is it even this hopealone that leads them; the fear of frightful punishments with which theyare menaced after death also influences them to live--in so far as theirimpotence and poverty of spirit permits--in conformity with theprescription of the Divine law. And were not this hope and this fearinfused into the minds of men--but, on the contrary, did they believethat the soul perished with the body, and that, beyond the grave, therewas no other life prepared for the wretched who had borne the burden _ofpiety_ in this--they would return to their natural inclinations, preferring to accommodate everything to their own liking, and wouldfollow fortune rather than reason. But all this appears no less absurdthan it would be to suppose that a man, because he did not believe thathe could nourish his body eternally with wholesome food, would saturatehimself with deadly poisons; or than if because believing that his soulwas not eternal and immortal, he should therefore prefer to be without asoul (_amens_) and to live without reason; all of which is so absurd asto be scarcely worth refuting (_quæ adeo absurda sunt, ut vix recenserimereantur_). "

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure thateither it is flagrantly stupid--in which case all comment issuperfluous--or it is something formidable, the very crux of theproblem. And this it is in this case. Yes! poor Portuguese Jew exiled inHolland, yes! that he who is convinced without a vestige of doubt, without the faintest hope of any saving uncertainty, that his soul isnot immortal, should prefer to be without a soul (_amens_), orirrational, or idiot, that he should prefer not to have been born, is asupposition that has nothing, absolutely nothing, absurd in it. Was hehappy, the poor Jewish intellectualist definer of intellectual love andof happiness? For that and no other is the problem. "What does it profitthee to know the definition of compunction if thou dost not feel it?"says à Kempis. And what profits it to discuss or to define happiness ifyou cannot thereby achieve happiness? Not inapposite in this connectionis that terrible story that Diderot tells of a eunuch who desired totake lessons in esthetics from a native of Marseilles in order that hemight be better qualified to select the slaves destined for the harem ofthe Sultan, his master. At the end of the first lesson, a physiologicallesson, brutally and carnally physiological, the eunuch exclaimedbitterly, "It is evident that I shall never know esthetics!" Even so, and just as eunuchs will never know esthetics as applied to theselection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists everknow ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, forhappiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that isreasoned about or defined. 

And you have another rationalist, one not sad or submissive, likeSpinoza, but rebellious, and though concealing a despair not lessbitter, making a hypocritical pretence of light-heartedness, you haveNietzsche, who discovered _mathematically_ (!!!) that counterfeit of theimmortality of the soul which is called "eternal recurrence, " and whichis in fact the most stupendous tragi-comedy or comi-tragedy. The numberof atoms or irreducible primary elements being finite and the universeeternal, a combination identical with that which at present exists mustat some future time be reproduced, and therefore that which now is mustbe repeated an infinite number of times. This is evident, and just as Ishall live again the life that I am now living, so I have already livedit before an infinite number of times, for there is an eternity thatstretches into the past--_a parte ante_--just as there will be onestretching into the future--_a parte post_. But, unfortunately, ithappens that I remember none of my previous existences, and perhaps itis impossible that I should remember them, for two things absolutely andcompletely identical are but one. Instead of supposing that we live in afinite universe, composed of a finite number of irreducible primaryelements, suppose that we live in an infinite universe, without limitsin space--which concrete infinity is not less inconceivable than theconcrete eternity in time--then it will follow that this system ofours, that of the Milky Way, is repeated an infinite number of times inthe infinite of space, and that therefore I am now living an infinitenumber of lives, all exactly identical. A jest, as you see, but one notless comic--that is to say, not less tragic--than that of Nietzsche, that of the laughing lion. And why does the lion laugh? I think helaughs with rage, because he can never succeed in finding consolation inthe thought that he has been the same lion before and is destined to bethe same lion again. 

But if Spinoza and Nietzsche were indeed both rationalists, each afterhis own manner, they were not spiritual eunuchs; they had heart, feeling, and, above all, hunger, a mad hunger for eternity, forimmortality. The physical eunuch does not feel the need of reproducinghimself carnally, in the body, and neither does the spiritual eunuchfeel the hunger for self-perpetuation. 

Certain it is that there are some who assert that reason suffices them, and they counsel us to desist from seeking to penetrate into theimpenetrable. But of those who say that they have no need of any faithin an eternal personal life to furnish them with incentives to livingand motives for action, I know not well how to think. A man blind frombirth may also assure us that he feels no great longing to enjoy theworld of sight nor suffers any great anguish from not having enjoyed it, and we must needs believe him, for what is wholly unknown cannot be theobject of desire--_nihil volitum quin præcognitum_, there can be novolition save of things already known. But I cannot be persuaded that hewho has once in his life, either in his youth or for some other briefspace of time, cherished the belief in the immortality of the soul, willever find peace without it. And of this sort of blindness from birththere are but few instances among us, and then only by a kind of strangeaberration. For the merely and exclusively rational man is an aberrationand nothing but an aberration. 

More sincere, much more sincere, are those who say: "We must not talkabout it, for in talking about it we only waste our time and weaken ourwill; let us do our duty here and hereafter let come what may. " But thissincerity hides a yet deeper insincerity. May it perhaps be that bysaying "We must not talk about it, " they succeed in not thinking aboutit? Our will is weakened? And what then? We lose the capacity for humanaction? And what then? It is very convenient to tell a man whom a fataldisease condemns to an early death, and who knows it, not to think aboutit. 

 _Meglio oprando obliar, senzá indagarlo, Questo enorme mister del universo!_

"Better to work and to forget and not to probe into this vast mystery ofthe universe!" Carducci wrote in his _Idilio Maremmano_, the sameCarducci who at the close of his ode _Sul Monte Mario_ tells us how theearth, the mother of the fugitive soul, must roll its burden of gloryand sorrow round the sun "until, worn out beneath the equator, mocked bythe last flames of dying heat, the exhausted human race is reduced to asingle man and woman, who, standing in the midst of dead woods, surrounded by sheer mountains, livid, with glassy eyes watch thee, Osun, set across the immense frozen waste. "

But is it possible for us to give ourselves to any serious and lastingwork, forgetting the vast mystery of the universe and abandoning allattempt to understand it? Is it possible to contemplate the vast Allwith a serene soul, in the spirit of the Lucretian piety, if we areconscious of the thought that a time must come when this All will nolonger be reflected in any human consciousness?

Cain, in Byron's poem, asks of Lucifer, the prince of the intellectuals, "Are ye happy?" and Lucifer replies, "We are mighty. " Cain questionsagain, "Are ye happy?" and then the great Intellectual says to him: "No;art thou?" And further on, this same Lucifer says to Adah, the sisterand wife of Cain: "Choose betwixt love and knowledge--since there is noother choice. " And in the same stupendous poem, when Cain says that thetree of the knowledge of good and evil was a lying tree, for "we knownothing; at least it promised knowledge at the price of death, " Luciferanswers him: "It may be death leads to the highest knowledge"--that isto say, to nothingness. 

To this word _knowledge_ which Lord Byron uses in the above quotations, the Spanish _ciencia_, the French _science_, the German _Wissenschaft_, is often opposed the word _wisdom, sabiduria, sagesse, Weisheit_. 

 Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest, says another lord, Tennyson, in his _Locksley Hall_. And what is thiswisdom which we have to seek chiefly in the poets, leaving knowledge onone side? It is well enough to say with Matthew Arnold in hisIntroduction to Wordsworth's poems, that poetry is reality andphilosophy illusion; but reason is always reason and reality is alwaysreality, that which can be proved to exist externally to us, whether wefind in it consolation or despair. 

I do not know why so many people were scandalized, or pretended to bescandalized, when Brunetière proclaimed again the bankruptcy of science. For science as a substitute for religion and reason as a substitute forfaith have always fallen to pieces. Science will be able to satisfy, andin fact does satisfy in an increasing measure, our increasing logical orintellectual needs, our desire to know and understand the truth; butscience does not satisfy the needs of our heart and our will, and farfrom satisfying our hunger for immortality it contradicts it. Rationaltruth and life stand in opposition to one another. And is it possiblethat there is any other truth than rational truth?

It must remain established, therefore, that reason--human reason--withinits limits, not only does not prove rationally that the soul isimmortal or that the human consciousness shall preserve itsindestructibility through the tracts of time to come, but that it provesrather--within its limits, I repeat--that the individual consciousnesscannot persist after the death of the physical organism upon which itdepends. And these limits, within which I say that human reason provesthis, are the limits of rationality, of what is known by demonstration. Beyond these limits is the irrational, which, whether it be called thesuper-rational or the infra-rational or the contra-rational, is all thesame thing. Beyond these limits is the absurd of Tertullian, theimpossible of the _certum est, quia impossibile est_. And this absurdcan only base itself upon the most absolute uncertainty. 

The rational dissolution ends in dissolving reason itself; it ends inthe most absolute scepticism, in the phenomenalism of Hume or in thedoctrine of absolute contingencies of Stuart Mill, the most consistentand logical of the positivists. The supreme triumph of reason, theanalytical--that is, the destructive and dissolvent--faculty, is to castdoubt upon its own validity. The stomach that contains an ulcer ends bydigesting itself; and reason ends by destroying the immediate andabsolute validity of the concept of truth and of the concept ofnecessity. Both concepts are relative; there is no absolute truth, noabsolute necessity. We call a concept true which agrees with the generalsystem of all our concepts; and we call a perception true which does notcontradict the system of our perceptions. Truth is coherence. But asregards the whole system, the aggregate, as there is nothing outside ofit of which we have knowledge, we cannot say whether it is true or not. It is conceivable that the universe, as it exists in itself, outside ofour consciousness, may be quite other than it appears to us, althoughthis is a supposition that has no meaning for reason. And as regardsnecessity, is there an absolute necessity? By necessary we mean merelythat which is, and in so far as it is, for in another moretranscendental sense, what absolute necessity, logical and independentof the fact that the universe exists, is there that there should be auniverse or anything else at all?

Absolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than scepticism, inthe most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of thereasoning reason. 

Feeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor doesreason succeed in converting truth into consolation. But reason goingbeyond truth itself, beyond the concept of reality itself, succeeds inplunging itself into the depths of scepticism. And in this abyss thescepticism of the reason encounters the despair of the heart, and thisencounter leads to the discovery of a basis--a terrible basis!--forconsolation to build on. 

Let us examine it. 

FOOTNOTES:

[26] _Pragmatism, a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking_. Popularlectures on philosophy by William James, 1907. 

[27] _Treatise of Human Nature_, book i. , part iv. , sect. Vi. , "OfPersonal Identity": "I never can catch _myself_ at any time without aperception, and never can observe anything but the perception. "

[28] Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, _Lectures on the History of the EasternChurch_, lecture i. , sect. Iii. 

[29] 1 Cor. I. 23. 

[30] Gustave Flaubert, _Correspondance_, troisième série (1854-1869). Paris, 1910. 

VI

IN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS

_Parce unicæ spes totius orbis. _--TERTULLIANUS, Adversus Marcionem, 5. 

We have seen that the vital longing for human immortality finds noconsolation in reason and that reason leaves us without incentive orconsolation in life and life itself without real finality. But here, inthe depths of the abyss, the despair of the heart and of the will andthe scepticism of reason meet face to face and embrace like brothers. And we shall see it is from this embrace, a tragic--that is to say, anintimately loving--embrace, that the wellspring of life will flow, alife serious and terrible. Scepticism, uncertainty--the position towhich reason, by practising its analysis upon itself, upon its ownvalidity, at last arrives--is the foundation upon which the heart'sdespair must build up its hope. 

Disillusioned, we had to abandon the position of those who seek to giveconsolation the force of rational and logical truth, pretending to provethe rationality, or at any rate the non-irrationality, of consolation;and we had to abandon likewise the position of those who seek to giverational truth the force of consolation and of a motive for life. Neither the one nor the other of these positions satisfied us. The oneis at variance with our reason, the other with our feeling. These twopowers can never conclude peace and we must needs live by their war. Wemust make of this war, of war itself, the very condition of ourspiritual life. 

Neither does this high debate admit of that indecent and repugnantexpedient which the more or less parliamentary type of politician hasdevised and dubbed "a formula of agreement, " the property of which is torender it impossible for either side to claim to be victorious. Thereis no place here for a time-serving compromise. Perhaps a degenerate andcowardly reason might bring itself to propose some such formula ofagreement, for in truth reason lives by formulas; but life, which cannotbe formulated, life which lives and seeks to live for ever, does notsubmit to formulas. Its sole formula is: all or nothing. Feeling doesnot compound its differences with middle terms. 

_Initium sapientiæ timor Domini_, it is said, meaning perhaps _timormortis_, or it may be, _timor vitæ_, which is the same thing. Always itcomes about that the beginning of wisdom is a fear. 

Is it true to say of this saving scepticism which I am now going todiscuss, that it is doubt? It is doubt, yes, but it is much more thandoubt. Doubt is commonly something very cold, of very little vitalizingforce, and above all something rather artificial, especially sinceDescartes degraded it to the function of a method. The conflict betweenreason and life is something more than a doubt. For doubt is easilyresolved into a comic element. 

The methodical doubt of Descartes is a comic doubt, a doubt purelytheoretical and provisional--that is to say, the doubt of a man who actsas if he doubted without really doubting. And because it was astove-excogitated doubt, the man who deduced that he existed from thefact that he thought did not approve of "those turbulent(_brouillonnes_) and restless persons who, being called neither by birthnor by fortune to the management of public affairs, are perpetuallydevising some new reformation, " and he was pained by the suspicion thatthere might be something of this kind in his own writings. No, he, Descartes, proposed only to "reform his own thoughts and to build uponground that was wholly his. " And he resolved not to accept anything astrue when he did not recognize it clearly to be so, and to make a cleansweep of all prejudices and received ideas, to the end that he mightconstruct his intellectual habitation anew. But "as it is not enough, before beginning to rebuild one's dwelling-house, to pull it down and tofurnish materials and architects, or to study architecture oneself . . . But it is also necessary to be provided with some other wherein to lodgeconveniently while the work is in progress, " he framed for himself aprovisional ethic--_une morale de provision_--the first law of which wasto observe the customs of his country and to keep always to the religionin which, by the grace of God, he had been instructed from his infancy, governing himself in all things according to the most moderate opinions. Yes, exactly, a provisional religion and even a provisional God! And hechose the most moderate opinions "because these are always the mostconvenient for practice. " But it is best to proceed no further. 

This methodical or theoretical Cartesian doubt, this philosophical doubtexcogitated in a stove, is not the doubt, is not the scepticism, is notthe incertitude, that I am talking about here. No! This other doubt is apassionate doubt, it is the eternal conflict between reason and feeling, science and life, logic and biotic. For science destroys the concept ofpersonality by reducing it to a complex in continual flux from moment tomoment--that is to say, it destroys the very foundation of the spiritualand emotional life, which ranges itself unyieldingly against reason. 

And this doubt cannot avail itself of any provisional ethic, but has tofound its ethic, as we shall see, on the conflict itself, an ethic ofbattle, and itself has to serve as the foundation of religion. And itinhabits a house which is continually being demolished and whichcontinually it has to rebuild. Without ceasing the will, I mean the willnever to die, the spirit of unsubmissiveness to death, labours to buildup the house of life, and without ceasing the keen blasts and stormyassaults of reason beat it down. 

And more than this, in the concrete vital problem that concerns us, reason takes up no position whatever. In truth, it does something worsethan deny the immortality of the soul--for that at any rate would be onesolution--it refuses even to recognize the problem as our vital desirepresents it to us. In the rational and logical sense of the termproblem, there is no such problem. This question of the immortality ofthe soul, of the persistence of the individual consciousness, is notrational, it falls outside reason. As a problem, and whatever solutionit may receive, it is irrational. Rationally even the very propoundingof the problem lacks sense. The immortality of the soul is asunconceivable as, in all strictness, is its absolute mortality. For thepurpose of explaining the world and existence--and such is the task ofreason--it is not necessary that we should suppose that our soul iseither mortal or immortal. The mere enunciation of the problem is, therefore, an irrationality. 

Let us hear what our brother Kierkegaard has to say. "The danger ofabstract thought is seen precisely in respect of the problem ofexistence, the difficulty of which it solves by going round it, afterwards boasting that it has completely explained it. It explainsimmortality in general, and it does so in a remarkable way byidentifying it with eternity--with the eternity which is essentially themedium of thought. But with the immortality of each individuallyexisting man, wherein precisely the difficulty lies, abstraction doesnot concern itself, is not interested in it. And yet the difficulty ofexistence lies just in the interest of the existing being--the man whoexists is infinitely interested in existing. Abstract thought besteadsimmortality only in order that it may kill me as an individual beingwith an individual existence, and so make me immortal, pretty much inthe same way as that famous physician in one of Holberg's plays, whosemedicine, while it took away the patient's fever, took away his life atthe same time. An abstract thinker, who refuses to disclose and admitthe relation that exists between his abstract thought and the fact thathe is an existing being, produces a comic impression upon us, howeveraccomplished and distinguished he may be, for he runs the risk ofceasing to be a man. While an effective man, compounded of infinitudeand finitude, owes his effectiveness precisely to the conjunction ofthese two elements and is infinitely interested in existing, an abstractthinker, similarly compounded, is a double being, a fantastical being, who lives in the pure being of abstraction, and at times presents thesorry figure of a professor who lays aside this abstract essence as helays aside his walking-stick. When one reads the Life of a thinker ofthis kind--whose writings may be excellent--one trembles at the thoughtof what it is to be a man. And when one reads in his writings thatthinking and being are the same thing, one thinks, remembering his life, that that being, which is identical with thinking, is not precisely thesame thing as being a man" (_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, chap. Iii. ). 

What intense passion--that is to say, what truth--there is in thisbitter invective against Hegel, prototype of the rationalist!--for therationalist takes away our fever by taking away our life, and promisesus, instead of a concrete, an abstract immortality, as if the hunger forimmortality that consumes us were an abstract and not a concrete hunger!

It may indeed be said that when once the dog is dead there is an end tothe rabies, and that after I have died I shall no more be tortured bythis rage of not dying, and that the fear of death, or more properly, ofnothingness, is an irrational fear, but . . . Yes, but . . . _Eppur simuove!_ And it will go on moving. For it is the source of all movement!

I doubt, however, whether our brother Kierkegaard is altogether in theright, for this same abstract thinker, or thinker of abstractions, thinks _in order that_ he may exist, that he may not cease to exist, orthinks perhaps in order to forget that he will have to cease to exist. This is the root of the passion for abstract thought. And possibly Hegelwas as infinitely interested as Kierkegaard in his own concrete, individual existence, although the professional decorum of thestate-philosopher compelled him to conceal the fact. 

Faith in immortality is irrational. And, notwithstanding, faith, life, and reason have mutual need of one another. This vital longing is notproperly a problem, cannot assume a logical status, cannot be formulatedin propositions susceptible of rational discussion; but it announcesitself in us as hunger announces itself. Neither can the wolf thatthrows itself with the fury of hunger upon its prey or with the fury ofinstinct upon the she-wolf, enunciate its impulse rationally and as alogical problem. Reason and faith are two enemies, neither of which canmaintain itself without the other. The irrational demands to berationalized and reason only can operate on the irrational. They arecompelled to seek mutual support and association. But association instruggle, for struggle is a mode of association. 

In the world of living beings the struggle for life establishes anassociation, and a very close one, not only between those who unitetogether in combat against a common foe, but between the combatantsthemselves. And is there any possible association more intimate thanthat uniting the animal that eats another and the animal that is eaten, between the devourer and the devoured? And if this is clearly seen inthe struggle between individuals, it is still more evident in thestruggle between peoples. War has always been the most effective factorof progress, even more than commerce. It is through war that conquerorsand conquered learn to know each other and in consequence to love eachother. 

Christianity, the foolishness of the Cross, the irrational faith thatChrist rose from the dead in order to raise us from the dead, was savedby the rationalistic Hellenic culture, and this in its turn was saved byChristianity. Without Christianity the Renaissance would have beenimpossible. Without the Gospel, without St. Paul, the peoples who hadtraversed the Middle Ages would have understood neither Plato norAristotle. A purely rationalist tradition is as impossible as atradition purely religious. It is frequently disputed whether theReformation was born as the child of the Renaissance or as a protestagainst it, and both propositions may be said to be true, for the son isalways born as a protest against the father. It is also said that it wasthe revived Greek classics that led men like Erasmus back to St. Pauland to primitive Christianity, which is the most irrational form ofChristianity; but it may be retorted that it was St. Paul, that it wasthe Christian irrationality underlying his Catholic theology, that ledthem back to the classics. "Christianity is what it has come to be, " ithas been said, "only through its alliance with antiquity, while with theCopts and Ethiopians it is but a kind of buffoonery. Islam developedunder the influence of Persian and Greek culture, and under that of theTurks it has been transformed into a destructive barbarism. "[31]

We have emerged from the Middle Ages, from the medieval faith as ardentas it was at heart despairing, and not without its inward and abysmalincertitudes, and we have entered upon the age of rationalism, likewisenot without its incertitudes. Faith in reason is exposed to the samerational indefensibility as all other faith. And we may say with RobertBrowning, All we have gained, then, by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith For one of faith diversified by doubt. 

 (_Bishop Blougram's Apology_. )

And if, as I have said, faith, life, can only sustain itself by leaningupon reason, which renders it transmissible--and above all transmissiblefrom myself to myself--that is to say, reflective and conscious--it isnone the less true that reason in its turn can only sustain itself byleaning upon faith, upon life, even if only upon faith in reason, faithin its availability for something more than mere knowing, faith in itsavailability for living. Nevertheless, neither is faith transmissible orrational, nor is reason vital. 

The will and the intelligence have need of one another, and the reverseof that old aphorism, _nihil volitum quin præcognitum_, nothing iswilled but what is previously known, is not so paradoxical as at firstsight it may appear--_nihil cognitum quin prævolitum_, nothing is knownbut what is previously willed. Vinet, in his study of Cousin's book onthe _Pensées_ of Pascal, says: "The very knowledge of the mind as suchhas need of the heart. Without the desire to see there is no seeing; ina great materialization of life and of thought there is no believing inthe things of the spirit. " We shall see presently that to believe is, inthe first instance, to wish to believe. 

The will and the intelligence seek opposite ends: that we may absorb theworld into ourselves, appropriate it to ourselves, is the aim of thewill; that we may be absorbed into the world, that of the intelligence. Opposite ends?--are they not rather one and the same? No, they are not, although they may seem to be so. The intelligence is monist orpantheist, the will monotheist or egoist. The intelligence has no needof anything outside it to exercise itself upon; it builds its foundationwith ideas themselves, while the will requires matter. To know somethingis to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it, to dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself. 

Philosophy and religion are enemies, and because they are enemies theyhave need of one another. There is no religion without some philosophicbasis, no philosophy without roots in religion. Each lives by itscontrary. The history of philosophy is, strictly speaking, a history ofreligion. And the attacks which are directed against religion from apresumed scientific or philosophical point of view are merely attacksfrom another but opposing religious point of view. "The opposition whichprofessedly exists between natural science and Christianity reallyexists between an impulse derived from natural religion blended with thescientific investigation of nature, and the validity of the Christianview of the world, which assures to spirit its pre-eminence over theentire world of nature, " says Ritschl (_Rechtfertgung und Versöhnung_, iii. Chap. Iv. § 28). Now this instinct is the instinct of rationalityitself. And the critical idealism of Kant is of religious origin, and itis in order to save religion that Kant enlarged the limits of reasonafter having in a certain sense dissolved it in scepticism. The systemof antitheses, contradictions, and antinomies, upon which Hegelconstructed his absolute idealism, has its root and germ in Kanthimself, and this root is an irrational root. 

We shall see later on, when we come to deal with faith, that faith is inits essence simply a matter of will, not of reason, that to believe isto wish to believe, and to believe in God is, before all and above all, to wish that there may be a God. In the same way, to believe in theimmortality of the soul is to wish that the soul may be immortal, but towish it with such force that this volition shall trample reason underfoot and pass beyond it. But reason has its revenge. 

The instinct of knowing and the instinct of living, or rather ofsurviving, come into conflict. In his work on the _Analysis of theSensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical_, [32] Dr. E. Mach tells us that not even the investigator, the savant, _derForscher_, is exempted from taking his part in the struggle forexistence, that even the roads of science lead mouth-wards, and that inthe actual conditions of the society in which we live the pure instinctof knowing, _der reine Erkenntnisstrieb_, is still no more than anideal. And so it always will be. _Primum vivere, deinde philosophari_, or perhaps better, _primum supervivere_ or _superesse_. 

Every position of permanent agreement or harmony between reason andlife, between philosophy and religion, becomes impossible. And thetragic history of human thought is simply the history of a strugglebetween reason and life--reason bent on rationalizing life and forcingit to submit to the inevitable, to mortality; life bent on vitalizingreason and forcing it to serve as a support for its own vital desires. And this is the history of philosophy, inseparable from the history ofreligion. 

Our sense of the world of objective reality is necessarily subjective, human, anthropomorphic. And vitalism will always rise up againstrationalism; reason will always find itself confronted by will. Hencethe rhythm of the history of philosophy and the alternation of periodsin which life imposes itself, giving birth to spiritual forms, withthose in which reason imposes itself, giving birth to materialist forms, although both of these classes of forms of belief may be disguised byother names. Neither reason nor life ever acknowledges itselfvanquished. But we will return to this in the next chapter. 

The vital consequence of rationalism would be suicide. Kierkegaard putsit very well: "The consequence for existence[33] of pure thought issuicide. . . . We do not praise suicide but passion. The thinker, on thecontrary, is a curious animal--for a few spells during the day he isvery intelligent, but, for the rest, he has nothing in common with man"(_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, chap iii. , § 1). 

As the thinker, in spite of all, does not cease to be a man, he employsreason in the interests of life, whether he knows it or not. Life cheatsreason and reason cheats life. Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophyfabricated in the interest of life a teleologic-evolutionist system, rational in appearance, which might serve as a support for our vitallonging. This philosophy, the basis of the orthodox Christiansupernaturalism, whether Catholic or Protestant, was, in its essence, merely a trick on the part of life to force reason to lend it itssupport. But reason supported it with such pressure that it ended bypulverizing it. 

I have read that the ex-Carmelite, Hyacinthe Loyson, declared that hecould present himself before God with tranquillity, for he was at peacewith his conscience and with his reason. With what conscience? If withhis religious conscience, then I do not understand. For it is a truththat no man can serve two masters, and least of all when, though theymay sign truces and armistices and compromises, these two are enemiesbecause of their conflicting interests. 

To all this someone is sure to object that life ought to subject itselfto reason, to which we will reply that nobody ought to do what he isunable to do, and life cannot subject itself to reason. "Ought, therefore can, " some Kantian will retort. To which we shall demur:"Cannot, therefore ought not. " And life cannot submit itself to reason, because the end of life is living and not understanding. 

Again, there are those who talk of the religious duty of resignation tomortality. This is indeed the very summit of aberration and insincerity. But someone is sure to oppose the idea of veracity to that of sincerity. Granted, and yet the two may very well be reconciled. Veracity, thehomage I owe to what I believe to be rational, to what logically wecall truth, moves me to affirm, in this case, that the immortality ofthe individual soul is a contradiction in terms, that it is something, not only irrational, but contra-rational; but sincerity leads me toaffirm also my refusal to resign myself to this previous affirmation andmy protest against its validity. What I feel is a truth, at any rate asmuch a truth as what I see, touch, hear, or what is demonstrated tome--nay, I believe it is more of a truth--and sincerity obliges me notto hide what I feel. 

And life, quick to defend itself, searches for the weak point in reasonand finds it in scepticism, which it straightway fastens upon, seekingto save itself by means of this stranglehold. It needs the weakness ofits adversary. 

Nothing is sure. Everything is elusive and in the air. In an outburst ofpassion Lamennais exclaims: "But what! Shall we, losing all hope, shutour eyes and plunge into the voiceless depths of a universal scepticism?Shall we doubt that we think, that we feel, that we are? Nature does notallow it; she forces us to believe even when our reason is notconvinced. Absolute certainty and absolute doubt are both alikeforbidden to us. We hover in a vague mean between these two extremes, asbetween being and nothingness; for complete scepticism would be theextinction of the intelligence and the total death of man. But it is notgiven to man to annihilate himself; there is in him something whichinvincibly resists destruction, I know not what vital faith, indomitableeven by his will. Whether he likes it or not, he must believe, becausehe must act, because he must preserve himself. His reason, if helistened only to that, teaching him to doubt everything, itselfincluded, would reduce him to a state of absolute inaction; he wouldperish before even he had been able to prove to himself that he existed"(_Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_, iii^e partie, chap. Lxvii. ). 

Reason, however, does not actually lead us to absolute scepticism. No!Reason does not lead me and cannot lead me to doubt that I exist. Whither reason does lead me is to vital scepticism, or more properly, tovital negation--not merely to doubt, but to deny, that my consciousnesssurvives my death. Scepticism is produced by the clash between reasonand desire. And from this clash, from this embrace between despair andscepticism, is born that holy, that sweet, that saving incertitude, which is our supreme consolation. 

The absolute and complete certainty, on the one hand, that death is acomplete, definite, irrevocable annihilation of personal consciousness, a certainty of the same order as the certainty that the three angles ofa triangle are equal to two right angles, or, on the other hand, theabsolute and complete certainty that our personal consciousness isprolonged beyond death in these present or in other conditions, andabove all including in itself that strange and adventitious addition ofeternal rewards and punishments--both of these certainties alike wouldmake life impossible for us. In the most secret chamber of the spirit ofhim who believes himself convinced that death puts an end to hispersonal consciousness, his memory, for ever, and all unknown to himperhaps, there lurks a shadow, a vague shadow, a shadow of shadow, ofuncertainty, and while he says within himself, "Well, let us live thislife that passes away, for there is no other!" the silence of thissecret chamber speaks to him and murmurs, "Who knows!. . . " He may notthink he hears it, but he hears it nevertheless. And likewise in somesecret place of the soul of the believer who most firmly holds thebelief in a future life, there is a muffled voice, a voice ofuncertainty, which whispers in the ear of his spirit, "Who knows!. . . "These voices are like the humming of a mosquito when the south-west windroars through the trees in the wood; we cannot distinguish this fainthumming, yet nevertheless, merged in the clamour of the storm, itreaches the ear. Otherwise, without this uncertainty, how could we live?

_"Is there?" "Is there not?"_--these are the bases of our inner life. There may be a rationalist who has never wavered in his conviction ofthe mortality of the soul, and there may be a vitalist who has neverwavered in his faith in immortality; but at the most this would onlyprove that just as there are natural monstrosities, so there are thosewho are stupid as regards heart and feeling, however great theirintelligence, and those who are stupid intellectually, however greattheir virtue. But, in normal cases, I cannot believe those who assure methat never, not in a fleeting moment, not in the hours of direstloneliness and grief, has this murmur of uncertainty breathed upon theirconsciousness. I do not understand those men who tell me that theprospect of the yonder side of death has never tormented them, that thethought of their own annihilation never disquiets them. For my part I donot wish to make peace between my heart and my head, between my faithand my reason--I wish rather that there should be war between them!

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark it is related how aman brought unto Jesus his son who was possessed by a dumb spirit, andwheresoever the spirit took him it tore him, causing him to foam andgnash his teeth and pine away, wherefore he sought to bring him to Jesusthat he might cure him. And the Master, impatient of those who soughtonly for signs and wonders, exclaimed: "O faithless generation, how longshall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me"(ver. 19), and they brought him unto him. And when the Master saw himwallowing on the ground, he asked his father how long it was ago sincethis had come unto him and the father replied that it was since he was &child. And Jesus said unto him: "If thou canst believe, all things arepossible to him that believeth" (ver. 23). And then the father of theepileptic or demoniac uttered these pregnant and immortal words: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"--_Pisteyô, kyrie, boêthei têhapistia mou_ (ver. 24). 

"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!" A contradiction seemingly, for if he believes, if he trusts, how is it that he beseeches the Lordto help his lack of trust? Nevertheless, it is this contradiction thatgives to the heart's cry of the father of the demoniac its most profoundhuman value. His faith is a faith that is based upon incertitude. Because he believes--that is to say, because he wishes to believe, because he has need that his son should be cured--he beseeches the Lordto help his unbelief, his doubt that such a cure could be effected. Ofsuch kind is human faith; of such kind was the heroic faith that SanchoPanza had in his master, the knight Don Quijote de la Mancha, as I thinkI have shown in my _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_; a faith based uponincertitude, upon doubt. Sancho Panza was indeed a man, a whole and atrue man, and he was not stupid, for only if he had been stupid would hehave believed, without a shadow of doubt, in the follies of his master. And his master himself did not believe in them without a shadow ofdoubt, for neither was Don Quixote, though mad, stupid. He was at hearta man of despair, as I think I have shown in my above-mentioned book. And because he was a man of an heroical despair, the hero of that inwardand resigned despair, he stands as the eternal exemplar of every manwhose soul is the battle-ground of reason and immortal desire. Our LordDon Quixote is the prototype of the vitalist whose faith is based uponuncertainty, and Sancho is the prototype of the rationalist who doubtshis own reason. 

Tormented by torturing doubts, August Hermann Francke resolved to callupon God, a God in whom he did not believe, or rather in whom hebelieved that he did not believe, imploring Him to take pity upon him, upon the poor pietist Francke, if perchance He really existed. [34] Andfrom a similar state of mind came the inspiration of the sonnet entitled"The Atheist's Prayer, " which is included in my _Rosario de SonetosLíricos_, and closes with these lines:

 _Sufro yo a tu costa, Dios no existiente, pues si tú existieras existiería yo también de veras. _[35]

Yes, if God the guarantor of our personal immortality existed, thenshould we ourselves really exist. And if He exists not, neither do weexist. 

That terrible secret, that hidden will of God which, translated into thelanguage of theology, is known as predestination, that idea whichdictated to Luther his _servum arbitrium_, and which gives to Calvinismits tragic sense, that doubt of our own salvation, is in its essencenothing but uncertainty, and this uncertainty, allied with despair, forms the basis of faith. Faith, some say, consists in not thinkingabout it, in surrendering ourselves trustingly to the arms of God, thesecrets of whose providence are inscrutable. Yes, but infidelity alsoconsists in not thinking about it. This absurd faith, this faith thatknows no shadow of uncertainty, this faith of the stupid coalheaver, joins hands with an absurd incredulity, the incredulity that knows noshadow of uncertainty, the incredulity of the intellectuals who areafflicted with affective stupidity in order that they may not thinkabout it. 

And what but uncertainty, doubt, the voice of reason, was that abyss, that terrible _gouffre_, before which Pascal trembled? And it was thatwhich led him to pronounce his terrible sentence, _il fauts'abêtir_--need is that we become fools!

All Jansenism, the Catholic adaptation of Calvinism, bears the sameimpress. Port-Royal, which owed its existence to a Basque, the Abbé deSaint-Cyran, a man of the same race as Iñigo de Loyola and as he whowrites these lines, always preserved deep down a sediment of religiousdespair, of the suicide of reason. Loyola also slew his reason inobedience. 

Our affirmation is despair, our negation is despair, and from despair weabstain from affirming and denying. Note the greater part of ouratheists and you will see that they are atheists from a kind of rage, rage at not being able to believe that there is a God. They are thepersonal enemies of God. They have invested Nothingness with substanceand personality, and their No-God is an Anti-God. 

And concerning that abject and ignoble saying, "If there were not a Godit would be necessary to invent Him, " we shall say nothing. It is theexpression of the unclean scepticism of those conservatives who lookupon religion merely as a means of government and whose interest it isthat in the other life there shall be a hell for those who oppose theirworldly interests in this life. This repugnant and Sadducean phrase isworthy of the time-serving sceptic to whom it is attributed. 

No, with all this the deep vital sense has nothing to do. It has nothingto do with a transcendental police regimen, or with securing order--andwhat an order!--upon earth by means of promises and threats of eternalrewards and punishments after death. All this belongs to a lowerplane--that is to say, it is merely politics, or if you like, ethics. The vital sense has to do with living. 

But it is in our endeavour to represent to ourselves what the life ofthe soul after death really means that uncertainty finds its surestfoundation. This it is that most shakes our vital desire and mostintensifies the dissolvent efficacy of reason. For even if by a mightyeffort of faith we overcome that reason which tells and teaches us thatthe soul is only a function of the physical organism, it yet remainsfor our imagination to conceive an image of the immortal and eternallife of the soul. This conception involves us in contradictions andabsurdities, and it may be that we shall arrive with Kierkegaard at theconclusion that if the mortality of the soul is terrible, not lessterrible is its immortality. 

But when we have overcome the first, the only real difficulty, when wehave overcome the impediment of reason, when we have achieved the faith, however painful and involved in uncertainty it may be, that our personalconsciousness shall continue after death, what difficulty, whatimpediment, lies in the way of our imagining to ourselves thispersistence of self in harmony with our desire? Yes, we can imagine itas an eternal rejuvenescence, as an eternal growth of ourselves, and asa journeying towards God, towards the Universal Consciousness, withoutever an arrival, we can imagine it as . . . But who shall put fetters uponthe imagination, once it has broken the chain of the rational?

I know that all this is dull reading, tiresome, perhaps tedious, but itis all necessary. And I must repeat once again that we have nothing todo with a transcendental police system or with the conversion of Godinto a great Judge or Policeman--that is to say, we are not concernedwith heaven or hell considered as buttresses to shore up our poorearthly morality, nor are we concerned with anything egoistic orpersonal. It is not I myself alone, it is the whole human race that isinvolved, it is the ultimate finality of all our civilization. I am butone, but all men are I's. 

Do you remember the end of that _Song of the Wild Cock_ which Leopardiwrote in prose?--the despairing Leopardi, the victim of reason, whonever succeeded in achieving belief. "A time will come, " he says, "whenthis Universe and Nature itself will be extinguished. And just as of thegrandest kingdoms and empires of mankind and the marvellous thingsachieved therein, very famous in their own time, no vestige or memoryremains to-day, so, in like manner, of the entire world and of thevicissitudes and calamities of all created things there will remain nota single trace, but a naked silence and a most profound stillness willfill the immensity of space. And so before ever it has been uttered orunderstood, this admirable and fearful secret of universal existencewill be obliterated and lost. " And this they now describe by ascientific and very rationalistic term--namely, _entropia_. Very pretty, is it not? Spencer invented the notion of a primordial homogeneity, fromwhich it is impossible to conceive how any heterogeneity couldoriginate. Well now, this _entropia_ is a kind of ultimate homogeneity, a state of perfect equilibrium. For a soul avid of life, it is the mostlike nothingness that the mind can conceive. 

 * * * * *

To this point, through a series of dolorous reflections, I have broughtthe reader who has had the patience to follow me, endeavouring always todo equal justice to the claims of reason and of feeling. I have notwished to keep silence on matters about which others are silent; I havesought to strip naked, not only my own soul, but the human soul, be itsnature what it may, its destiny to disappear or not to disappear. And wehave arrived at the bottom of the abyss, at the irreconcilable conflictbetween reason and vital feeling. And having arrived here, I have toldyou that it is necessary to accept the conflict as such and to live byit. Now it remains for me to explain to you how, according to my way offeeling, and even according to my way of thinking, this despair may bethe basis of a vigorous life, of an efficacious activity, of an ethic, of an esthetic, of a religion and even of a logic. But in what followsthere will be as much of imagination as of ratiocination, or rather, much more. 

I do not wish to deceive anyone, or to offer as philosophy what it maybe is only poetry or phantasmagoria, in any case a kind of mythology. The divine Plato, after having discussed the immortality of the soul inhis dialogue _Phædo_ (an ideal--that is to say, a lying--immortality), embarked upon an interpretation of the myths which treat of the otherlife, remarking that it was also necessary to mythologize. Let us, then, mythologize. 

He who looks for reasons, strictly so called, scientific arguments, technically logical reflections, may refuse to follow me further. Throughout the remainder of these reflections upon the tragic sense, Iam going to fish for the attention of the reader with the naked, unbaited hook; whoever wishes to bite, let him bite, but I deceive noone. Only in the conclusion I hope to gather everything together and toshow that this religious despair which I have been talking about, andwhich is nothing other than the tragic sense of life itself, is, thoughmore or less hidden, the very foundation of the consciousness ofcivilized individuals and peoples to-day--that is to say, of thoseindividuals and those peoples who do not suffer from stupidity ofintellect or stupidity of feeling. 

And this tragic sense is the spring of heroic achievements. 

If in that which follows you shall meet with arbitrary apothegms, brusque transitions, inconsecutive statements, veritable somersaults ofthought, do not cry out that you have been deceived. We are about toenter--if it be that you wish to accompany me--upon a field ofcontradictions between feeling and reasoning, and we shall have to availourselves of the one as well as of the other. 

That which follows is not the outcome of reason but of life, although inorder that I may transmit it to you I shall have to rationalize it aftera fashion. The greater part of it can be reduced to no logical theory orsystem; but like that tremendous Yankee poet, Walt Whitman, "I chargethat there be no theory or school founded out of me" (_Myself andMine_). 

Neither am I the only begetter of the fancies I am about to set forth. By no means. They have also been conceived by other men, if notprecisely by other thinkers, who have preceded me in this vale of tears, and who have exhibited their life and given expression to it. Theirlife, I repeat, not their thought, save in so far as it was thoughtinspired by life, thought with a basis of irrationality. 

Does this mean that in all that follows, in the efforts of theirrational to express itself, there is a total lack of rationality, ofall objective value? No; the absolutely, the irrevocably irrational, isinexpressible, is intransmissible. But not the contra-rational. Perhapsthere is no way of rationalizing the irrational; but there is a way ofrationalizing the contra-rational, and that is by trying to explain it. Since only the rational is intelligible, really intelligible, and sincethe absurd, being devoid of sense, is condemned to be incommunicable, you will find that whenever we succeed in giving expression andintelligibility to anything apparently irrational or absurd weinvariably resolve it into something rational, even though it be intothe negation of that which we affirm. 

The maddest dreams of the fancy have some ground of reason, and whoknows if everything that the imagination of man can conceive either hasnot already happened, or is not now happening or will not happen sometime, in some world or another? The possible combinations are perhapsinfinite. It only remains to know whether all that is imaginable ispossible. 

It may also be said, and with justice, that much of what I am about toset forth is merely a repetition of ideas which have been expressed ahundred times before and a hundred times refuted; but the repetition ofan idea really implies that its refutation has not been final. And as Ido not pretend that the majority of these fancies are new, so neither doI pretend, obviously, that other voices before mine have not spoken tothe winds the same laments. But when yet another voice echoes the sameeternal lament it can only be inferred that the same grief still dwellsin the heart. 

And it comes not amiss to repeat yet once again the same eternallamentations that were already old in the days of Job and Ecclesiastes, and even to repeat them in the same words, to the end that the devoteesof progress may see that there is something that never dies. Whosoeverrepeats the "Vanity of vanities" of Ecclesiastes or the lamentations ofJob, even though without changing a letter, having first experiencedthem in his soul, performs a work of admonition. Need is to repeatwithout ceasing the _memento mori_. 

"But to what end?" you will ask. Even though it be only to the end thatsome people should be irritated and should see that these things are notdead and, so long as men exist, cannot die; to the end that they shouldbe convinced that to-day, in the twentieth century, all the bygonecenturies and all of them alive, are still subsisting. When a supposederror reappears, it must be, believe me, that it has not ceased to betrue in part, just as when one who was dead reappears, it must be thathe was not wholly dead. 

Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel andexpress; that many others feel it to-day, although they keep silenceabout it. Why do I not keep silence about it too? Well, for the veryreason that most of those who feel it are silent about it; and yet, though they are silent, they obey in silence that inner voice. And I donot keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which mustnot be spoken, the abomination of abominations--_infandum_--and Ibelieve that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which mustnot be spoken. But if it leads to nothing? Even if it should lead onlyto irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth isconsolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them andmaking them say: Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence tobetter purpose!. . . Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what Isay, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right--and beingright is such a little thing!--but that I feel what I say and I knowwhat I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking inreason than to have too much of it. 

And the reader who perseveres in reading me will also see how out ofthis abyss of despair hope may arise, and how this critical position maybe the well-spring of human, profoundly human, action and effort, and ofsolidarity and even of progress. He will see its pragmaticjustification. And he will see how, in order to work, and to workefficaciously and morally, there is no need of either of these twoconflicting certainties, either that of faith or that of reason, and howstill less is there any need--this never under any circumstances--toshirk the problem of the immortality of the soul, or to distort itidealistically--that is to say, hypocritically. The reader will see howthis uncertainty, with the suffering that accompanies it, and thefruitless struggle to escape from it, may be and is a basis for actionand morals. 

And in the fact that it serves as a basis for action and morals, thisfeeling of uncertainty and the inward struggle between reason on the onehand and faith and the passionate longing for eternal life on the other, should find their justification in the eyes of the pragmatist. But itmust be clearly stated that I do not adduce this practical consequencein order to justify the feeling, but merely because I encounter it in myinward experience. I neither desire to seek, nor ought I to seek, anyjustification for this state of inward struggle and uncertainty andlonging; it is a fact and that suffices. And if anyone finding himselfin this state, in the depth of the abyss, fails to find there motivesfor and incentives to life and action, and concludes by committingbodily or spiritual suicide, whether he kills himself or he abandons allco-operation with his fellows in human endeavour, it will not be I whowill pass censure upon him. And apart from the fact that the evilconsequences of a doctrine, or rather those which we call evil, onlyprove, I repeat, that the doctrine is disastrous for our desires, butnot that it is false in itself, the consequences themselves depend notso much upon the doctrine as upon him who deduces them. The sameprinciple may furnish one man with grounds for action and another manwith grounds for abstaining from action, it may lead one man to directhis effort towards a certain end and another man towards a directlyopposite end. For the truth is that our doctrines are usually only thejustification _a posteriori_ of our conduct, or else they are our way oftrying to explain that conduct to ourselves. 

Man, in effect, is unwilling to remain in ignorance of the motives ofhis own conduct. And just as a man who has been led to perform a certainaction by hypnotic suggestion will afterwards invent reasons which wouldjustify it and make it appear logical to himself and others, beingunaware all the time of the real cause of his action, so every man--forsince "life is a dream" every man is in a condition of hypnotism--seeksto find reasons for his conduct. And if the pieces on a chessboard wereendowed with consciousness, they would probably have little difficultyin ascribing their moves to freewill--that is to say, they would claimfor them a finalist rationality. And thus it comes about that everyphilosophic theory serves to explain and justify an ethic, a doctrine ofconduct, which has its real origin in the inward moral feeling of theauthor of the theory. But he who harbours this feeling may possiblyhimself have no clear consciousness of its true reason or cause. 

Consequently, if my reason, which is in a certain sense a part of thereason of all my brothers in humanity in time and space, teaches me thisabsolute scepticism in respect of what concerns my longing fornever-ending life, I think that I can assume that my feeling of life, which is the essence of life itself, my vitality, my boundless appetitefor living and my abhorrence of dying, my refusal to submit todeath--that it is this which suggests to me the doctrines with which Itry to counter-check the working of the reason. Have these doctrines anobjective value? someone will ask me, and I shall answer that I do notunderstand what this objective value of a doctrine is. I will not saythat the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I amabout to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture tosay that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspiresthese doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed instrengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps whenit was all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work and, aboveall, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reasonor against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I dieout, I die out altogether, then I shall not have died out ofmyself--that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my humandestiny will have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather myheart, I will not abdicate from life--life will be wrested from me. 

To have recourse to those, ambiguous words, "optimism" and "pessimism, "does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the verycontrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket adoctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, andthe so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe, on the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatestof all, have been men of despair and that by despair they haveaccomplished their mighty works. Apart from this, however, and acceptingin all their ambiguity these denominations of optimism and pessimism, that there exists a certain transcendental pessimism which may be thebegetter of a temporal and terrestrial optimism, is a matter that Ipropose to develop in the following part of this treatise. 

Very different, well I know, is the attitude of our progressives, thepartisans of "the central current of contemporary European thought"; butI cannot bring myself to believe that these individuals do notvoluntarily close their eyes to the grand problem of existence and that, in endeavouring to stifle this feeling of the tragedy of life, theythemselves are not living a lie. 

The foregoing reflections are a kind of practical summary of thecriticism developed in the first six chapters of this treatise, a kindof definition of the practical position to which such a criticism iscapable of leading whosoever will not renounce life and will notrenounce reason and who is compelled to live and act between these upperand nether millstones which grind upon the soul. The reader who followsme further is now aware that I am about to carry him into the region ofthe imagination, of imagination not destitute of reason, for withoutreason nothing subsists, but of imagination founded on feeling. And asregards its truth, the real truth, that which is independent ofourselves, beyond the reach of our logic and of our heart--of this truthwho knows aught?

FOOTNOTES:

[31] See Troeltsch, _Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kulturder Gegenwart_ series. 

[32] _Die Analyse der Empfindigungen und das Verhältniss des Physischenzum Psychischen_, i. , § 12, note. 

[33] I have left the original expression here, almost withouttranslating it--_Existents-Consequents_. It means the existential orpractical, not the purely rational or logical, consequence. (Author'snote. )

[34] Albrecht Ritschl: _Geschichte des Pietismus_, ii. , Abt. I. , Bonn, 1884, p. 251. 

[35] Thou art the cause of my suffering, O non-existing God, for if Thoudidst exist, then should I also really exist. 

VII

LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY

 CAIN: Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn To anticipate my immortality. 

 LUCIFER: Thou didst before I came upon thee. 

 CAIN: How?

 LUCIFER: By suffering. 

 BYRON: _Cain_, Act II. , Scene I. 

The most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers ofmine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent ofdisillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicineagainst death, for it is death's brother. 

 _Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte Ingeneró la sorte_, as Leopardi sang. 

Love seeks with fury, through the medium of the beloved, somethingbeyond, and since it finds it not, it despairs. 

Whenever we speak of love there is always present in our memory the ideaof sexual love, the love between man and woman, whose end is theperpetuation of the human race upon the earth. Hence it is that we neversucceed in reducing love either to a purely intellectual or to a purelyvolitional element, putting aside that part in it which belongs to thefeeling, or, if you like, to the senses. For, in its essence, love isneither idea nor volition; rather it is desire, feeling; it is somethingcarnal in spirit itself. Thanks to love, we feel all that spirit has offlesh in it. 

Sexual love is the generative type of every other love. In love and bylove we seek to perpetuate ourselves, and we perpetuate ourselves on theearth only on condition that we die, that we yield up our life toothers. The humblest forms of animal life, the lowest of living beings, multiply by dividing themselves, by splitting into two, by ceasing to bethe unit which they previously formed. 

But when at last the vitality of the being that multiplies itself bydivision is exhausted, the species must renew the source of life fromtime to time by means of the union of two wasting individuals, by meansof what is called, among protozoaria, conjugation. They unite in orderto begin dividing again with more vigour. And every act of generationconsists in a being's ceasing to be what it was, either wholly or inpart, in a splitting up, in a partial death. To live is to give oneself, to perpetuate oneself, and to perpetuate oneself and to give oneself isto die. The supreme delight of begetting is perhaps nothing but aforetaste of death, the eradication of our own vital essence. We unitewith another, but it is to divide ourselves; this most intimate embraceis only a most intimate sundering. In its essence, the delight of sexuallove, the genetic spasm, is a sensation of resurrection, of renewing ourlife in another, for only in others can we renew our life and soperpetuate ourselves. 

Without doubt there is something tragically destructive in the essenceof love, as it presents itself to us in its primitive animal form, inthe unconquerable instinct which impels the male and the female to mixtheir being in a fury of conjunction. The same impulse that joins theirbodies, separates, in a certain sense, their souls; they hate oneanother, while they embrace, no less than they love, and above all theycontend with one another, they contend for a third life, which as yet iswithout life. Love is a contention, and there are animal species inwhich the male maltreats the female in his union with her, and other inwhich the female devours the male after being fertilized by him. 

It has been said that love is a mutual selfishness; and, in fact, eachone of the lovers seeks to possess the other, and in seeking his ownperpetuation through the instrumentality of the other, though withoutbeing at the time conscious of it or purposing it, he thereby seeks hisown enjoyment. Each one of the lovers is an immediate instrument ofenjoyment and a mediate instrument of perpetuation, for the other. Andthus they are tyrants and slaves, each one at once the tyrant and slaveof the other. 

Is there really anything strange in the fact that the deepest religiousfeeling has condemned carnal love and exalted virginity? Avarice, saidthe Apostle, is the root of all evil, and the reason is because avaricetakes riches, which are only a means, for an end; and therein lies theessence of sin, in taking means for ends, in not recognizing or indisesteeming the end. And since it takes enjoyment for the end, whereasit is only the means, and not perpetuation, which is the true end, whatis carnal love but avarice? And it is possible that there are some whopreserve their virginity in order the better to perpetuate themselves, and in order to perpetuate something more human than the flesh. 

For it is the suffering flesh, it is suffering, it is death, that loversperpetuate upon the earth. Love is at once the brother, son, and fatherof death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter. And thus it is thatin the depth of love there is a depth of eternal despair, out of whichspring hope and consolation. For out of this carnal and primitive loveof which I have been speaking, out of this love of the whole body withall its senses, which is the animal origin of human society, out of thisloving-fondness, rises spiritual and sorrowful love. 

This other form of love, this spiritual love, is born of sorrow, isborn of the death of carnal love, is born also of the feeling ofcompassion and protection which parents feel in the presence of astricken child. Lovers never attain to a love of self abandonment, oftrue fusion of soul and not merely of body, until the heavy pestle ofsorrow has bruised their hearts and crushed them in the same mortar ofsuffering. Sensual love joined their bodies but disjoined their souls;it kept their souls strangers to one another; but of this love isbegotten a fruit of their flesh--a child. And perchance this child, begotten in death, falls sick and dies. Then it comes to pass that overthe fruit of their carnal fusion and spiritual separation andestrangement, their bodies now separated and cold with sorrow but unitedby sorrow their souls, the lovers, the parents, join in an embrace ofdespair, and then is born, of the death of the child of their flesh, thetrue spiritual love. Or rather, when the bond of flesh which united themis broken, they breathe with a sigh of relief. For men love one anotherwith a spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrowtogether, when through long days they have ploughed the stony groundbowed beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that theyknow one another and feel one another, and feel with one another intheir common anguish, they pity one another and love one another. For tolove is to pity; and if bodies are united by pleasure, souls are unitedby pain. 

And this is felt with still more clearness and force in the seeding, thetaking root, and the blossoming of one of those tragic loves which aredoomed to contend with the diamond-hard laws of Destiny--one of thoseloves which are born out of due time and season, before or after themoment, or out of the normal mode in which the world, which is custom, would have been willing to welcome them. The more barriers Destiny andthe world and its law interpose between the lovers, the stronger is theimpulse that urges them towards one another, and their happiness inloving one another turns to bitterness, and their unhappiness in notbeing able to love freely and openly grows heavier, and they pity oneanother from the bottom of their hearts; and this common pity, which istheir common misery and their common happiness, gives fire and fuel totheir love. And they suffer their joy, enjoying their suffering. Andthey establish their love beyond the confines of the world, and thestrength of this poor love suffering beneath the yoke of Destiny givesthem intuition of another world where there is no other law than theliberty of love--another world where there are no barriers because thereis no flesh. For nothing inspires us more with hope and faith in anotherworld than the impossibility of our love truly fructifying in this worldof flesh and of appearances. 

And what is maternal love but compassion for the weak, helpless, defenceless infant that craves the mother's milk and the comfort of herbreast? And woman's love is all maternal. 

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most. Men aflame with a burning charity towards their neighbours are thusenkindled because they have touched the depth of their own misery, theirown apparentiality, their own nothingness, and then, turning their newlyopened eyes upon their fellows, they have seen that they also aremiserable, apparential, condemned to nothingness, and they have pitiedthem and loved them. 

Man yearns to be loved, or, what is the same thing, to be pitied. Manwishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. Theroadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations issomething more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. Truealms is pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the materialhardships of life. The beggar shows little gratitude for alms thrown tohim by one who hurries past with averted face; he is more grateful tohim who pities him but does not help than to him who helps but does notpity, although from another point of view he may prefer the latter. Observe with what satisfaction he relates his woes to one who is movedby the story of them. He desires to be pitied, to be loved. 

Woman's love, above all, as I have remarked, is always compassionate inits essence--maternal. Woman yields herself to the lover because shefeels that his desire makes him suffer. Isabel had compassion uponLorenzo, Juliet upon Romeo, Francesca upon Paolo. Woman seems to say:"Come, poor one, thou shalt not suffer so for my sake!" And therefore isher love more loving and purer than that of man, braver and moreenduring. 

Pity, then, is the essence of human spiritual love, of the love that isconscious of being love, of the love that is not purely animal, of thelove, in a word, of a rational person. Love pities, and pities most whenit loves most. 

Reversing the terms of the adage _nihil volitum quin præcognitum_, Ihave told you that _nihil cognitum quin prævolitum_, that we knownothing save what we have first, in one way or another, desired; and itmay even be added that we can know nothing well save what we love, savewhat we pity. 

As love grows, this restless yearning to pierce to the uttermost and tothe innermost, so it continually embraces all that it sees, and pitiesall that it embraces. According as you turn inwards and penetrate moredeeply into yourself, you will discover more and more your ownemptiness, that you are not all that you are not, that you are not whatyou would wish to be, that you are, in a word, only a nonentity. And intouching your own nothingness, in not feeling your permanent base, innot reaching your own infinity, still less your own eternity, you willhave a whole-hearted pity for yourself, and you will burn with asorrowful love for yourself--a love that will consume your so-calledself-love, which is merely a species of sensual self-delectation, theself-enjoyment, as it were, of the flesh of your soul. 

Spiritual self-love, the pity that one feels for oneself, may perhaps becalled egotism; but nothing could be more opposed to ordinary egoism. For this love or pity for yourself, this intense despair, bred of theconsciousness that just as before you were born you were not, so afteryour death you will cease to be, will lead you to pity--that is, tolove--all your fellows and brothers in this world of appearance, theseunhappy shadows who pass from nothingness to nothingness, these sparksof consciousness which shine for a moment in the infinite and eternaldarkness. And this compassionate feeling for other men, for yourfellows, beginning with those most akin to you, those with whom youlive, will expand into a universal pity for all living things, andperhaps even for things that have not life but merely existence. Thatdistant star which shines up there in the night will some day bequenched and will turn to dust and will cease to shine and cease toexist. And so, too, it will be with the whole of the star-strewnheavens. Unhappy heavens!

And if it is grievous to be doomed one day to cease to be, perhaps itwould be more grievous still to go on being always oneself, and no morethan oneself, without being able to be at the same time other, withoutbeing able to be at the same time everything else, without being able tobe all. 

If you look at the universe as closely and as inwardly as you are ableto look--that is to say, if you look within yourself; if you not onlycontemplate but feel all things in your own consciousness, upon whichall things have traced their painful impression--you will arrive at theabyss of the tedium, not merely of life, but of something more: at thetedium of existence, at the bottomless pit of the vanity of vanities. And thus you will come to pity all things; you will arrive at universallove. 

In order to love everything, in order to pity everything, human andextra-human, living and non-living, you must feel everything withinyourself, you must personalize everything. For everything that it loves, everything that it pities, love personalizes. We only pity--that is tosay, we only love--that which is like ourselves and in so far as it islike ourselves, and the more like it is the more we love; and thus ourpity for things, and with it our love, grows in proportion as wediscover in them the likenesses which they have with ourselves. Or, rather, it is love itself, which of itself tends to grow, that revealsthese resemblances to us. If I am moved to pity and love the lucklessstar that one day will vanish from the face of heaven, it is becauselove, pity, makes me feel that it has a consciousness, more or less dim, which makes it suffer because it is no more than a star, and a star thatis doomed one day to cease to be. For all consciousness is consciousnessof death and of suffering. 

Consciousness (_conscientia_) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Onlyby personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love isso great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loveseverything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the totalAll, that the Universe, is also a Person possessing a Consciousness, aConsciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, andtherefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we callGod. And thus the soul pities God and feels itself pitied by Him; lovesHim and feels itself loved by Him, sheltering its misery in the bosom ofthe eternal and infinite misery, which, in eternalizing itself andinfinitizing itself, is the supreme happiness itself. 

God is, then, the personalization of the All; He is the eternal andinfinite Consciousness of the Universe--Consciousness taken captive bymatter and struggling to free himself from it. We personalize the Allin order to save ourselves from Nothingness; and the only mystery reallymysterious is the mystery of suffering. 

Suffering is the path of consciousness, and by it living beings arriveat the possession of self-consciousness. For to possess consciousness ofoneself, to possess personality, is to know oneself and to feel oneselfdistinct from other beings, and this feeling of distinction is onlyreached through an act of collision, through suffering more or lesssevere, through the sense of one's own limits. Consciousness of oneselfis simply consciousness of one's own limitation. I feel myself when Ifeel that I am not others; to know and to feel the extent of my being isto know at what point I cease to be, the point beyond which I no longeram. 

And how do we know that we exist if we do not suffer, little or much?How can we turn upon ourselves, acquire reflective consciousness, saveby suffering? When we enjoy ourselves we forget ourselves, forget thatwe exist; we pass over into another, an alien being, we alienateourselves. And we become centred in ourselves again, we return toourselves, only by suffering. 

 _Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria_

are the words that Dante puts into the mouth of Francesca da Rimini(_Inferno_, v. , 121-123); but if there is no greater sorrow than therecollection in adversity of happy bygone days, there is, on the otherhand, no pleasure in remembering adversity in days of prosperity. 

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and toachieve nothing" (_polla phroneoita mêdenos chrateein_)--soHerodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (bookix. , chap. Xvi. ). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we canembrace everything, or almost everything; with the will nothing, oralmost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness--no! not if thiscontemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between ourknowledge and our power pity arises. 

We pity what is like ourselves, and the greater and clearer our sense ofits likeness with ourselves, the greater our pity. And if we may saythat this likeness provokes our pity, it may also be maintained that itis our reservoir of pity, eager to diffuse itself over everything, thatmakes us discover the likeness of things with ourselves, the common bondthat unites us with them in suffering. 

Our own struggle to acquire, preserve, and increase our ownconsciousness makes us discover in the endeavours and movements andrevolutions of all things a struggle to acquire, preserve, and increaseconsciousness, to which everything tends. Beneath the actions of thosemost akin to myself, of my fellow-men, I feel--or, rather, I co-feel--astate of consciousness similar to that which lies beneath my ownactions. On hearing my brother give a cry of pain, my own pain awakesand cries in the depth of my consciousness. And in the same way I feelthe pain of animals, and the pain of a tree when one of its branches isbeing cut off, and I feel it most when my imagination is alive, for theimagination is the faculty of intuition, of inward vision. 

Proceeding from ourselves, from our own human consciousness, the onlyconsciousness which we feel from within and in which feeling isidentical with being, we attribute some sort of consciousness, more orless dim, to all living things, and even to the stones themselves, forthey also live. And the evolution of organic beings is simply a struggleto realize fullness of consciousness through suffering, a continualaspiration to be others without ceasing to be themselves, to break andyet to preserve their proper limits. 

And this process of personalization or subjectivization of everythingexternal, phenomenal, or objective, is none other than the vitalprocess of philosophy in the contest of life against reason and ofreason against life. We have already indicated it in the precedingchapter, and we must now confirm it by developing it further. 

Giovanni Baptista Vico, with his profound esthetic penetration into thesoul of antiquity, saw that the spontaneous philosophy of man was tomake of himself the norm of the universe, guided by the _instintod'animazione_. Language, necessarily anthropomorphic, mythopeic, engenders thought. "Poetic wisdom, which was the primitive wisdom ofpaganism, " says Vico in his _Scienza Nuova_, "must have begun with ametaphysic, not reasoned and abstract, like that of modern educated men, but felt and imagined, such as must have been that of primitive men. This was their own poetry, which with them was inborn, an innatefaculty, for nature had furnished them with such feelings and suchimaginations, a faculty born of the ignorance of causes, and thereforebegetting a universal sense of wonder, for knowing nothing theymarvelled greatly at everything. This poetry had a divine origin, for, while they invented the causes of things out of their own imagination, at the same time they regarded these causes with feelings of wonder asgods. In this way the first men of the pagan peoples, as children of thegrowing human race, fashioned things out of their ideas. . . . This natureof human things has bequeathed that eternal property which Tacituselucidated with a fine phrase when he said, not without reason, that menin their terror _fingunt simul creduntque_. "

And then, passing from the age of imagination, Vico proceeds to show usthe age of reason, this age of ours in which the mind, even the popularmind, is too remote from the senses, "with so many abstractions of whichall languages are full, " an age in which "the ability to conceive animmense image of such a personage as we call sympathetic Nature isdenied to us, for though the phrase 'Dame Nature' may be on our lips, there is nothing in our minds that corresponds with it, our minds beingoccupied with the false, the non-existent. " "To-day, " Vico continues, "it is naturally impossible for us to enter into the vast imagination ofthese primitive men. " But is this certain? Do not we continue to live bythe creations of their imagination, embodied for ever in the languagewith which we think, or, rather, the language which thinks in us?

It was in vain that Comte declared that human thought had alreadyemerged from the age of theology and was now emerging from the age ofmetaphysics into the age of positivism; the three ages coexist, andalthough antagonistic they lend one another mutual support. High-sounding positivism, whenever it ceases to deny and begins toaffirm something, whenever it becomes really positive, is nothing butmetaphysics; and metaphysics, in its essence, is always theology, andtheology is born of imagination yoked to the service of life, of lifewith its craving for immortality. 

Our feeling of the world, upon which is based our understanding of it, is necessarily anthropomorphic and mythopeic. When rationalism dawnedwith Thales of Miletus, this philosopher abandoned Oceanus and Thetis, gods and the progenitors of gods, and attributed the origin of things towater; but this water was a god in disguise. Beneath nature (_phhysist_)and the world (_khosmos_), mythical and anthropomorphic creationsthrobbed with life. They were implicated in the structure of languageitself. Xenophon tells us (_Memorabilia_, i. , i. , 6-9) that amongphenomena Socrates distinguished between those which were within thescope of human study and those which the gods had reserved forthemselves, and that he execrated the attempt of Anaxagoras to explaineverything rationally. His contemporary, Hippocrates, regarded diseasesas of divine origin, and Plato believed that the sun and stars wereanimated gods with their souls (_Philebus_, cap. Xvi. , _Laws_, x. ), andonly permitted astronomical investigation so long as it abstained fromblasphemy against these gods. And Aristotle in his _Physics_ tells usthat Zeus rains not in order that the corn may grow, but by necessity(_ex anharchêst_). They tried to mechanize and rationalize God, but Godrebelled against them. 

And what is the concept of God, a concept continually renewed becausespringing out of the eternal feeling of God in man, but the eternalprotest of life against reason, the unconquerable instinct ofpersonalization? And what is the notion of substance itself but theobjectivization of that which is most subjective--that is, of the willor consciousness? For consciousness, even before it knows itself asreason, feels itself, is palpable to itself, is most in harmony withitself, as will, and as will not to die. Hence that rhythm, of which wespoke, in the history of thought. Positivism inducted us into an age ofrationalism--that is to say, of materialism, mechanism, or mortalism;and behold now the return of vitalism, of spiritualism. What was theeffort of pragmatism but an effort to restore faith in the humanfinality of the universe? What is the effort of a Bergson, for example, especially in his work on creative evolution, but an attempt tore-integrate the personal God and eternal consciousness? Life neversurrenders. 

And it avails us nothing to seek to repress this mythopeic oranthropomorphic process and to rationalize our thought, as if we thoughtonly for the sake of thinking and knowing, and not for the sake ofliving. The very language with which we think prevents us from so doing. Language, the substance of thought, is a system of metaphors with amythic and anthropomorphic base. And to construct a purely rationalphilosophy it would be necessary to construct it by means of algebraicformulas or to create a new language for it, an inhuman language--thatis to say, one inapt for the needs of life--as indeed Dr. RichardAvenarius, professor of philosophy at Zürich, attempted to do in his_Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_), in order toavoid preconceptions. And this rigorous attempt of Avenarius, the chiefof the critics of experience, ends strictly in pure scepticism. Hehimself says at the end of the Prologue to the work above mentioned:"The childish confidence that it is granted to us to discover truth haslong since disappeared; as we progress we become aware of thedifficulties that lie in the way of its discovery and of the limitationof our powers. And what is the end?. . . If we could only succeed inseeing clearly into ourselves!"

Seeing clearly! seeing clearly! Clear vision would be only attainable bya pure thinker who used algebra instead of language and was able todivest himself of his own humanity--that is to say, by an unsubstantial, merely objective being: a no-being, in short. In spite of reason we arecompelled to think with life, and in spite of life we are compelled torationalize thought. 

This animation, this personification, interpenetrates our veryknowledge. "Who is it that sends the rain? Who is it that thunders?" oldStrepsiades asks of Socrates in _The Clouds_ of Aristophanes, and thephilosopher replies: "Not Zeus, but the clouds. " "But, " questionsStrepsiades, "who but Zeus makes the clouds sweep along?" to whichSocrates answers: "Not a bit of it; it is atmospheric whirligig. ""Whirligig?" muses Strepsiades; "I never thought of that--that Zeus isgone and that Son Whirligig rules now in his stead. " And so the old mangoes on personifying and animating the whirlwind, as if the whirlwindwere now a king, not without consciousness of his kingship. And inexchanging a Zeus for a whirlwind--God for matter, for example--we alldo the same thing. And the reason is because philosophy does not workupon the objective reality which we perceive with the senses, but uponthe complex of ideas, images, notions, perceptions, etc. , embodied inlanguage and transmitted to us with our language by our ancestors. Thatwhich we call the world, the objective world, is a social tradition. Itis given to us ready made. 

Man does not submit to being, as consciousness, alone in the Universe, nor to being merely one objective phenomenon the more. He wishes to savehis vital or passional subjectivity by attributing life, personality, spirit, to the whole Universe. In order to realize his wish he hasdiscovered God and substance; God and substance continually reappear inhis thought cloaked in different disguises. Because we are conscious, wefeel that we exist, which is quite another thing from knowing that weexist, and we wish to feel the existence of everything else; we wishthat of all the other individual things each one should also be an "I. "

The most consistent, although the most incongruous and vacillating, idealism, that of Berkeley, who denied the existence of matter, ofsomething inert and extended and passive, as the cause of our sensationsand the substratum of external phenomena, is in its essence nothing butan absolute spiritualism or dynamism, the supposition that everysensation comes to us, causatively, from another spirit--that is, fromanother consciousness. And his doctrine has a certain affinity withthose of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. The former's doctrine of the Willand the latter's doctrine of the Unconscious are already implied in theBerkeleyan theory that to be is to be perceived. To which must be added:and to cause others to perceive what is. Thus the old adage _operarisequitur esse_ (action follows being) must be modified by saying that tobe is to act, and only that which acts--the active--exists, and in sofar as it acts. 

As regards Schopenhauer, there is no need to endeavour to show that thewill, which he posits as the essence of things, proceeds fromconsciousness. And it is only necessary to read his book on the Will inNature to see how he attributed a certain spirit and even a certainpersonality to the plants themselves. And this doctrine of his carriedhim logically to pessimism, for the true property and most inwardfunction of the will is to suffer. The will is a force which feelsitself--that is, which suffers. And, someone will add, which enjoys. Butthe capacity to enjoy is impossible without the capacity to suffer; andthe faculty of enjoyment is one with that of pain. Whosoever does notsuffer does not enjoy, just as whosoever is insensible to cold isinsensible to heat. 

And it is also quite logical that Schopenhauer, who deduced pessimismfrom the voluntarist doctrine or doctrine of universal personalization, should have deduced from both of these that the foundation of morals iscompassion. Only his lack of the social and historical sense, hisinability to feel that humanity also is a person, although a collectiveone, his egoism, in short, prevented him from feeling God, prevented himfrom individualizing and personalizing the total and collectiveWill--the Will of the Universe. 

On the other hand, it is easy to understand his aversion from purelyempirical, evolutionist, or transformist doctrines, such as those setforth in the works of Lamarck and Darwin which came to his notice. Judging Darwin's theory solely by an extensive extract in _The Times_, he described it, in a letter to Adam Louis von Doss (March 1, 1860), as"downright empiricism" _(platter Empirismus)_. In fact, for avoluntarist like Schopenhauer, a theory so sanely and cautiouslyempirical and rational as that of Darwin left out of account the inwardforce, the essential motive, of evolution. For what is, in effect, thehidden force, the ultimate agent, which impels organisms to perpetuatethemselves and to fight for their persistence and propagation?Selection, adaptation, heredity, these are only external conditions. This inner, essential force has been called will on the supposition thatthere exists also in other beings that which we feel in ourselves as afeeling of will, the impulse to be everything, to be others as well asourselves yet without ceasing to be what we are. And it may be saidthat this force is the divine in us, that it is God Himself who works inus because He suffers in us. 

And sympathy teaches us to discover this force, this aspiration towardsconsciousness, in all things. It moves and activates the most minuteliving creatures; it moves and activates, perhaps, the very cells of ourown bodily organism, which is a confederation, more or less solidary, ofliving beings; it moves the very globules of our blood. Our life iscomposed of lives, our vital aspiration of aspirations existing perhapsin the limbo of subconsciousness. Not more absurd than so many otherdreams which pass as valid theories is the belief that our cells, ourglobules, may possess something akin to a rudimentary cellular, globularconsciousness or basis of consciousness. Or that they may arrive atpossessing such consciousness. And since we have given a loose rein tothe fancy, we may fancy that these cells may communicate with oneanother, and that some of them may express their belief that they formpart of a superior organism endowed with a collective personalconsciousness. And more than once in the history of human feeling thisfancy has been expressed in the surmisal of some philosopher or poetthat we men are a kind of globules in the blood of a Supreme Being, whopossesses his own personal collective consciousness, the consciousnessof the Universe. 

Perhaps the immense Milky Way which on clear nights we behold stretchingacross the heavens, this vast encircling ring in which our planetarysystem is itself but a molecule, is in its turn but a cell in theUniverse, in the Body of God. All the cells of our body combine andco-operate in maintaining and kindling by their activity ourconsciousness, our soul; and if the consciousness or the souls of allthese cells entered completely into our consciousness, into thecomposite whole, if I possessed consciousness of all that happens in mybodily organism, I should feel the universe happening within myself, and perhaps the painful sense of my limitedness would disappear. And ifall the consciousness of all beings unite in their entirety in theuniversal consciousness, this consciousness--that is to say, God--isall. 

In every instant obscure consciousnesses, elementary souls, are born anddie within us, and their birth and death constitute our life. And theirsudden and violent death constitutes our pain. And in like manner, inthe heart of God consciousnesses are born and die--but do they die?--andtheir births and deaths constitute His life. 

If there is a Universal and Supreme Consciousness, I am an idea in it;and is it possible for any idea in this Supreme Consciousness to becompletely blotted out? After I have died, God will go on rememberingme, and to be remembered by God, to have my consciousness sustained bythe Supreme Consciousness, is not that, perhaps, to be?

And if anyone should say that God has made the universe, it may berejoined that so also our soul has made our body as much as, if not morethan, it has been made by it--if, indeed, there be a soul. 

When pity, love, reveals to us the whole universe striving to gain, topreserve, and to enlarge its consciousness, striving more and more tosaturate itself with consciousness, feeling the pain of the discordswhich are produced within it, pity reveals to us the likeness of thewhole universe with ourselves; it reveals to us that it is human, and itleads us to discover our Father in it, of whose flesh we are flesh; loveleads us to personalize the whole of which we form a part. 

To say that God is eternally producing things is fundamentally the sameas saying that things are eternally producing God. And the belief in apersonal and spiritual God is based on the belief in our own personalityand spirituality. Because we feel ourselves to be consciousness, wefeel God to be consciousness--that is to say, a person; and because wedesire ardently that our consciousness shall live and be independentlyof the body, we believe that the divine person lives and existsindependently of the universe, that his state of consciousness is _adextra_. 

No doubt logicians will come forward and confront us with the evidentrational difficulties which this involves; but we have already statedthat, although presented under logical forms, the content of all this isnot strictly rational. Every rational conception of God is in itselfcontradictory. Faith in God is born of love for God--we believe that Godexists by force of wishing that He may exist, and it is born also, perhaps, of God's love for us. Reason does not prove to us that Godexists, but neither does it prove that He cannot exist. 

But of this conception of faith in God as the personalization of theuniverse we shall have more to say presently. 

And recalling what has been said in another part of this work, we maysay that material things, in so far as they are known to us, issue intoknowledge through the agency of hunger, and out of hunger issues thesensible or material universe in which we conglomerate these things; andthat ideal things issue out of love, and out of love issues God, in whomwe conglomerate these ideal things as in the Consciousness of theUniverse. It is social consciousness, the child of love, of the instinctof perpetuation, that leads us to socialize everything, to see societyin everything, and that shows us at last that all Nature is really aninfinite Society. For my part, the feeling that Nature is a society hastaken hold of me hundreds of times in walking through the woodspossessed with a sense of solidarity with the oaks, a sense of their dimawareness of my presence. 

Imagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate andanthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makeseverything identical with man. [36] And the work of man is tosupernaturalize Nature--that is to say, to make it divine by making ithuman, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action ofreason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize. 

And just as a fruitful union is consummated between the individual--whois, in a certain sense, a society--and society, which is also anindividual--the two being so inseparable from one another that it isimpossible to say where the one begins and the other ends, for they arerather two aspects of a single essence--so also the spirit, the socialelement, which by relating us to others makes us conscious, unites withmatter, the individual and individualizing element; similarly, reason orintelligence and imagination embrace in a mutually fruitful union, andthe Universe merges into one with God. 

 * * * * *

Is all this true? And what is truth? I in my turn will ask, as Pilateasked--not, however, only to turn away and wash my hands, withoutwaiting for an answer. 

Is truth in reason, or above reason, or beneath reason, or outside ofreason, in some way or another? Is only the rational true? May there notbe a reality, by its very nature, unattainable by reason, and perhaps, by its very nature, opposed to reason? And how can we know this realityif reason alone holds the key to knowledge?

Our desire of living, our need of life, asks that that may be true whichurges us to self-preservation and self-perpetuation, which sustains manand society; it asks that the true water may be that which assuages ourthirst, and because it assuages it, that the true bread may be thatwhich satisfies our hunger, because it satisfies it. 

The senses are devoted to the service of the instinct of preservation, and everything that satisfies this need of preserving ourselves, eventhough it does not pass through the senses, is nevertheless a kind ofintimate penetration of reality in us. Is the process of assimilatingnutriment perhaps less real than the process of knowing the nutritivesubstance? It may be said that to eat a loaf of bread is not the samething as seeing, touching, or tasting it; that in the one case it entersinto our body, but not therefore into our consciousness. Is this true?Does not the loaf of bread that I have converted into my flesh and bloodenter more into my consciousness than the other loaf which I see andtouch, and of which I say: "This is mine"? And must I refuse objectivereality to the bread that I have thus converted into my flesh and bloodand made mine when I only touch it?

There are some who live by air without knowing it. In the same way, itmay be, we live by God and in God--in God the spirit and consciousnessof society and of the whole Universe, in so far as the Universe is alsoa society. 

God is felt only in so far as He is lived; and man does not live bybread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God(Matt. Iv. 4; Deut. Viii. 3). 

And this personalization of the all, of the Universe, to which we areled by love, by pity, is the personalization of a person who embracesand comprehends within himself the other persons of which he iscomposed. 

The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness. For where there is no consciousness there is no finality, finalitypresupposing a purpose. And, as we shall see, faith in God is basedsimply upon the vital need of giving finality to existence, of making itanswer to a purpose. We need God, not in order to understand the _why_, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate _wherefore_, to give ameaning to the Universe. 

And neither ought we to be surprised by the affirmation that thisconsciousness of the Universe is composed and integrated by theconsciousnesses of the beings which form the Universe, by theconsciousnesses of all the beings that exist, and that nevertheless itremains a personal consciousness distinct from those which compose it. Only thus is it possible to understand how in God we live, move, andhave our being. That great visionary, Emanuel Swedenborg, saw or caughta glimpse of this in his book on Heaven and Hell _(De Coelo et Inferno_, lii. ), when he tells us: "An entire angelic society appears sometimes inthe form of a single angel, which also it hath been granted me by theLord to see. When the Lord Himself appears in the midst of the angels, He doth not appear as encompassed by a multitude, but as a single beingin angelic form. Hence it is that the Lord in the Word is called anangel, and likewise that on entire society is so called. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are nothing but angelical societies, which are sonamed from their functions. "

May we not perhaps live and love--that is, suffer and pity--in thisall-enveloping Supreme Person--we, all the persons who suffer and pityand all the beings that strive to achieve personality, to acquireconsciousness of their suffering and their limitation? And are we not, perhaps, ideas of this total Grand Consciousness, which by thinking ofus as existing confers existence upon us? Does not our existence consistin being perceived and felt by God? And, further on, this same visionarytells us, under the form of images, that each angel, each society ofangels, and the whole of heaven comprehensively surveyed, appear inhuman form, and in virtue of this human form the Lord rules them as oneman. 

"God does not think, He creates; He does not exist, He is eternal, "wrote Kierkegaard (_Afslutende uvidens-kabelige Efterskrift_); butperhaps it is more exact to say with Mazzini, the mystic of the Italiancity, that "God is great because His thought is action" (_Ai giovanid'ltalia_), because with Him to think is to create, and He givesexistence to that which exists in His thought by the mere fact ofthinking it, and the impossible is the unthinkable by God. Is it notwritten in the Scriptures that God creates with His word--that is tosay, with His thought--and that by this, by His Word, He made everythingthat exists? And what God has once made does He ever forget? May it notbe that all the thoughts that have ever passed through the SupremeConsciousness still subsist therein? In Him, who is eternal, is not allexistence eternalized?

Our longing to save consciousness, to give personal and human finalityto the Universe and to existence, is such that even in the midst of asupreme, an agonizing and lacerating sacrifice, we should still hear thevoice that assured us that if our consciousness disappears, it is thatthe infinite and eternal Consciousness may be enriched thereby, that oursouls may serve as nutriment to the Universal Soul. Yes, I enrich God, because before I existed He did not think of me as existing, because Iam one more--one more even though among an infinity of others--who, having really lived, really suffered, and really loved, abide in Hisbosom. It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, tomake it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God, to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him, yes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist. For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although Hefirst creates us. [37] It is He who in us is continually creatingHimself. 

We have created God in order to save the Universe from nothingness, forall that is not consciousness and eternal consciousness, conscious ofits eternity and eternally conscious, is nothing more than appearance. There is nothing truly real save that which feels, suffers, pities, loves, and desires, save consciousness; there is nothing substantial butconsciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not inorder to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to knowthe why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it. Love isa contradiction if there is no God. 

Let us now consider this idea of God, of the logical God or the SupremeReason, and of the vital God or the God of the heart--that is, SupremeLove. 

FOOTNOTES:

[36] _Todo lo humaniza, y aun lo humana_. 

[37] In the translation it is impossible to retain the play upon theverbs _crear_, to create, and _creer_, to believe: _"Porque creer enDios es en cierto modo crearle, aunque El nos cree antes. "_--J. E. C. F. 

VIII

FROM GOD TO GOD

To affirm that the religious sense is a sense of divinity and that it isimpossible without some abuse of the ordinary usages of human languageto speak of an atheistic religion, is not, I think, to do violence tothe truth; although it is clear that everything will depend upon theconcept that we form of God, a concept which in its turn depends uponthe concept of divinity. 

Our proper procedure, in effect, will be to begin with this sense ofdivinity, before prefixing to the concept of this quality the definitearticle and the capital letter and so converting it into "theDivinity"--that is, into God. For man has not deduced the divine fromGod, but rather he has reached God through the divine. 

In the course of these somewhat wandering but at the same time urgentreflections upon the tragic sense of life, I have already alluded to the_timor fecit deos_ of Statius with the object of limiting and correctingit. It is not my intention to trace yet once again the historicalprocesses by which peoples have arrived at the consciousness and conceptof a personal God like the God of Christianity. And I say peoples andnot isolated individuals, for if there is any feeling or concept that istruly collective and social it is the feeling and concept of God, although the individual subsequently individualizes it. Philosophy may, and in fact does, possess an individual origin; theology is necessarilycollective. 

Schleiermacher's theory, which attributes the origin, or rather theessence, of the religious sense to the immediate and simple feeling ofdependency, appears to be the most profound and exact explanation. Primitive man, living in society, feels himself to be dependent upon themysterious forces invisibly environing him; he feels himself to be insocial communion, not only with beings like himself, his fellow-men, butwith the whole of Nature, animate and inanimate, which simply means, inother words, that he personalizes everything. Not only does he possess aconsciousness of the world, but he imagines that the world, likehimself, possesses consciousness also. Just as a child talks to his dollor his dog as if it understood what he was saying, so the savagebelieves that his fetich hears him when he speaks to it, and that theangry storm-cloud is aware of him and deliberately pursues him. For thenewly born mind of the primitive natural man has not yet wholly severeditself from the cords which still bind it to the womb of Nature, neitherhas it clearly marked out the boundary that separates dreaming fromwaking, imagination from reality. 

The divine, therefore, was not originally something objective, but wasrather the subjectivity of consciousness projected exteriorly, thepersonalization of the world. The concept of divinity arose out of thefeeling of divinity, and the feeling of divinity is simply the dim andnascent feeling of personality vented upon the outside world. Andstrictly speaking it is not possible to speak of outside and inside, objective and subjective, when no such distinction was actually felt;indeed it is precisely from this lack of distinction that the feelingand concept of divinity proceed. The clearer our consciousness of thedistinction between the objective and the subjective, the more obscureis the feeling of divinity in us. 

It has been said, and very justly so it would appear, that Hellenicpaganism was not so much polytheistic as pantheistic. I do not know thatthe belief in a multitude of gods, taking the concept of God in thesense in which we understand it to-day, has ever really existed in anyhuman mind. And if by pantheism is understood the doctrine, not thateverything and each individual thing is God--a proposition which I findunthinkable--but that everything is divine, then it may be said withoutany great abuse of language that paganism was pantheistic. Its gods notonly mixed among men but intermixed with them; they begat gods uponmortal women and upon goddesses mortal men begat demi-gods. And ifdemi-gods, that is, demi-men, were believed to exist, it was because thedivine and the human were viewed as different aspects of the samereality. The divinization of everything was simply its humanization. Tosay that the sun was a god was equivalent to saying that it was a man, ahuman consciousness, more or less, aggrandized and sublimated. And thisis true of all beliefs from fetichism to Hellenic paganism. 

The real distinction between gods and men consisted in the fact that theformer were immortal. A god came to be identical with an immortal manand a man was deified, reputed as a god, when it was deemed that at hisdeath he had not really died. Of certain heroes it was believed thatthey were alive in the kingdom of the dead. And this is a point of greatimportance in estimating the value of the concept of the divine. 

In those republics of gods there was always some predominating god, somereal monarch. It was through the agency of this divine monarchy thatprimitive peoples were led from monocultism to monotheism. Hencemonarchy and monotheism are twin brethren. Zeus, Jupiter, was in processof being converted into an only god, just as Jahwé originally one godamong many others, came to be converted into an only god, first the godof the people of Israel, then the god of humanity, and finally the godof the whole universe. 

Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the marchand in time of war, " says Robertson Smith in _The Prophets ofIsrael_, [38] "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a centralauthority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of nationalorganization, centring in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thoughtof mainly as the host of Jehovah. The very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (_El_) fighteth, ' and Jehovah in the Old Testament isIahwè Çebäôth--the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on thebattlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but inprimitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge intime of peace. "

God, the only God, issued, therefore, from man's sense of divinity as awarlike, monarchical and social God. He revealed himself to the peopleas a whole, not to the individual. He was the God of a people and hejealously exacted that worship should be rendered to him alone. Thetransition from this monocultism to monotheism was effected largely bythe individual action, more philosophical perhaps than theological, ofthe prophets. It was, in fact, the individual activity of the prophetsthat individualized the divinity. And above all by making the divinityethical. 

Subsequently reason--that is, philosophy--took possession of this Godwho had arisen in the human consciousness as a consequence of the senseof divinity in man, and tended to define him and convert him into anidea. For to define a thing is to idealize it, a process whichnecessitates the abstraction from it of its incommensurable orirrational element, its vital essence. Thus the God of feeling, thedivinity felt as a unique person and consciousness external to us, although at the same time enveloping and sustaining us, was convertedinto the idea of God. 

The logical, rational God, the _ens summum_, the _primum movens_, theSupreme Being of theological philosophy, the God who is reached by thethree famous ways of negation, eminence and causality, _viæ negationis, eminentiæ, causalitatis_, is nothing but an idea of God, a dead thing. The traditional and much debated proofs of his existence are, at bottom, merely a vain attempt to determine his essence; for as Vinet has verywell observed, existence is deduced from essence; and to say that Godexists, without saying what God is and how he is, is equivalent tosaying nothing at all. 

And this God, arrived at by the methods of eminence and negation orabstraction of finite qualities, ends by becoming an unthinkable God, apure idea, a God of whom, by the very fact of his ideal excellence, wecan say that he is nothing, as indeed he has been defined by ScotusErigena: _Deus propter excellentiam non inmerito nihil vocatur_. Or inthe words of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in his fifth Epistle, "The divine darkness is the inaccessible light in which God is said todwell. " The anthropomorphic God, the God who is felt, in being purifiedof human, and as such finite, relative and temporal, attributes, evaporates into the God of deism or of pantheism. 

The traditional so-called proofs of the existence of God all refer tothis God-Idea, to this logical God, the God by abstraction, and hencethey really prove nothing, or rather, they prove nothing more than theexistence of this idea of God. 

In my early youth, when first I began to be puzzled by these eternalproblems, I read in a book, the author of which I have no wish torecall, [39] this sentence: "God is the great X placed over the ultimatebarrier of human knowledge; in the measure in which science advances, the barrier recedes. " And I wrote in the margin, "On this side of thebarrier, everything is explained without Him; on the further side, nothing is explained, either with Him or without Him; God therefore issuperfluous. " And so far as concerns the God-Idea, the God of theproofs, I continue to be of the same opinion. Laplace is said to havestated that he had not found the hypothesis of God necessary in order toconstruct his scheme of the origin of the Universe, and it is very true. In no way whatever does the idea of God help us to understand better theexistence, the essence and the finality of the Universe. 

That there is a Supreme Being, infinite, absolute and eternal, whoseexistence is unknown to us, and who has created the Universe, is notmore conceivable than that the material basis of the Universe itself, its matter, is eternal and infinite and absolute. We do not understandthe existence of the world one whit the better by telling ourselves thatGod created it. It is a begging of the question, or a merely verbalsolution, intended to cover up our ignorance. In strict truth, we deducethe existence of the Creator from the fact that the thing createdexists, a process which does not justify rationally His existence. Youcannot deduce a necessity from a fact, or else everything werenecessary. 

And if from the nature of the Universe we pass to what is called itsorder, which is supposed to necessitate an Ordainer, we may say thatorder is what there is, and we do not conceive of any other. Thisdeduction of God's existence from the order of the Universe implies atransition from the ideal to the real order, an outward projection ofour mind, a supposition that the rational explanation of a thingproduces the thing itself. Human art, instructed by Nature, possesses aconscious creative faculty, by means of which it apprehends the processof creation, and we proceed to transfer this conscious and artisticcreative faculty to the consciousness of an artist-creator, but fromwhat nature he in his turn learnt his art we cannot tell. 

The traditional analogy of the watch and the watchmaker is inapplicableto a Being absolute, infinite and eternal. It is, moreover, only anotherway of explaining nothing. For to say that the world is as it is and nototherwise because God made it so, while at the same time we do not knowfor what reason He made it so, is to say nothing. And if we knew forwhat reason God made it so, then God is superfluous and the reasonitself suffices. If everything were mathematics, if there were noirrational element, we should not have had recourse to this explanatorytheory of a Supreme Ordainer, who is nothing but the reason of theirrational, and so merely another cloak for our ignorance. And let usnot discuss here that absurd proposition that, if all the type in aprinting-press were printed at random, the result could not possibly bethe composition of _Don Quixote_. Something would be composed whichwould be as good as _Don Quixote_ for those who would have to be contentwith it and would grow in it and would form part of it. 

In effect, this traditional supposed proof of God's existence resolvesitself fundamentally into hypostatizing or substantivating theexplanation or reason of a phenomenon; it amounts to saying thatMechanics is the cause of movement, Biology of life, Philology oflanguage, Chemistry of bodies, by simply adding the capital letter tothe science and converting it into a force distinct from the phenomenafrom which we derive it and distinct from our mind which effects thederivation. But the God who is the result of this process, a God who isnothing but reason hypostatized and projected towards the infinite, cannot possibly be felt as something living and real, nor yet beconceived of save as a mere idea which will die with us. 

The question arises, on the other hand, whether a thing the idea ofwhich has been conceived but which has no real existence, does not existbecause God wills that it should not exist, or whether God does not willit to exist because, in fact, it does not exist; and, with regard to theimpossible, whether a thing is impossible because God wills it so, orwhether God wills it so because, in itself and by the very fact of itsown inherent absurdity, it is impossible. God has to submit to thelogical law of contradiction, and He cannot, according to thetheologians, cause two and two to make either more or less than four. Either the law of necessity is above Him or He Himself is the law ofnecessity. And in the moral order the question arises whether falsehood, or homicide, or adultery, are wrong because He has so decreed it, orwhether He has so decreed it because they are wrong. If the former, thenGod is a capricious and unreasonable God, who decrees one law when Hemight equally well have decreed another, or, if the latter, He obeys anintrinsic nature and essence which exists in things themselvesindependently of Him--that is to say, independently of His sovereignwill; and if this is the case, if He obeys the innate reason of things, this reason, if we could but know it, would suffice us without anyfurther need of God, and since we do not know it, God explains nothing. This reason would be above God. Neither is it of any avail to say thatthis reason is God Himself, the supreme reason of things. A reason ofthis kind, a necessary reason, is not a personal something. It is willthat gives personality. And it is because of this problem of therelations between God's reason, necessarily necessary, and His will, necessarily free, that the logical and Aristotelian God will always be acontradictory God. 

The scholastic theologians never succeeded in disentangling themselvesfrom the difficulties in which they found themselves involved when theyattempted to reconcile human liberty with divine prescience and with theknowledge that God possesses of the free and contingent future; and thatis strictly the reason why the rational God is wholly inapplicable tothe contingent, for the notion of contingency is fundamentally the sameas the notion of irrationality. The rational God is necessarilynecessary in His being and in His working; in every single case Hecannot do other than the best, and a number of different things cannotall equally be the best, for among infinite possibilities there is onlyone that is best accommodated to its end, just as among the infinitenumber of lines that can be drawn from one point to another, there isonly one straight line. And the rational God, the God of reason, cannotbut follow in each case the straight line, the line that leads mostdirectly to the end proposed, a necessary end, just as the only straightline that leads to it is a necessary line. And thus for the divinity ofGod is substituted His necessity. And in the necessity of God, His freewill--that is to say, His conscious personality--perishes. The God ofour heart's desire, the God who shall save our soul from nothingness, must needs be an arbitrary God. 

Not because He thinks can God be God, but because He works, because Hecreates; He is not a contemplative but an active God. A God-Reason, atheoretical or contemplative God, such as is this God of theologicalrationalism, is a God that is diluted in His own contemplation. Withthis God corresponds, as we shall see, the beatific vision, understoodas the supreme expression of human felicity. A quietist God, in short, as reason, by its very essence, is quietist. 

There remains the other famous proof of God's existence, that of thesupposed unanimous consent in a belief in Him among all peoples. Butthis proof is not strictly rational, neither is it an argument in favourof the rational God who explains the Universe, but of the God of theheart, who makes us live. We should be justified in calling it arational proof only on the supposition that we believed that reason wasidentical with a more or less unanimous agreement among all peoples, that it corresponded with the verdict of a universal suffrage, only onthe supposition that we held that _vox populi_, which is said to be _voxDei_, was actually the voice of reason. 

Such was, indeed, the belief of Lamennais, that tragic and ardentspirit, who affirmed that life and truth were essentially one and thesame thing--would that they were!--and that reason was one, universal, everlasting and holy (_Essai sur l'indifférence_, partie iv. , chap, viii. ). He invoked the _aut omnibus credendum est aut nemini_ ofLactantius--we must believe all or none--and the saying of Heraclitusthat every individual opinion is fallible, and that of Aristotle thatthe strongest proof consists in the general agreement of mankind, andabove all that of Pliny (_Paneg. Trajani_, lxii. ), to the effect thatone man cannot deceive all men or be deceived by all--_nemo omnes, neminem omnes fefellerunt_. Would that it were so! And so he concludeswith the dictum of Cicero (_De natura deorum_, lib. Iii. , cap. Ii. , 5and 6), that we must believe the tradition of our ancestors even thoughthey fail to render us a reason--_maioribus autem nostris, etiam nullaratione reddita credere_. 

Let us suppose that this belief of the ancients in the divineinterpenetration of the whole of Nature is universal and constant, andthat it is, as Aristotle calls it, an ancestral dogma (_patrios doxa_)(_Metaphysica_, lib. Vii. , cap. Vii. ); this would prove only that thereis a motive impelling peoples and individuals--that is to say, all oralmost all or a majority of them--to believe in a God. But may it not bethat there are illusions and fallacies rooted in human nature itself? Donot all peoples begin by believing that the sun turns round the earth?And do we not all naturally incline to believe that which satisfies ourdesires? Shall we say with Hermann[40] that, "if there is a God, He hasnot left us without some indication of Himself, and if is His will thatwe should find Him. "

A pious desire, no doubt, but we cannot strictly call it a reason, unless we apply to it the Augustinian sentence, but which again is nota reason, "Since thou seekest Me, it must be that thou hast found Me, "believing that God is the cause of our seeking Him. 

This famous argument from the supposed unanimity of mankind's belief inGod, the argument which with a sure instinct was seized upon by theancients, is in its essence identical with the so-called moral proofwhich Kant employed in his _Critique of Practical Reason_, transposingits application from mankind collectively to the individual, the proofwhich he derives from our conscience, or rather from our feeling ofdivinity. It is not a proof strictly or specifically rational, butvital; it cannot be applied to the logical God, the _ens summum_, theessentially simple and abstract Being, the immobile and impassible primemover, the God-Reason, in a word, but to the biotic God, to the Beingessentially complex and concrete, to the suffering God who suffers anddesires in us and with us, to the Father of Christ who is only to beapproached through Man, through His Son (John xiv. 6), and whoserevelation is historical, or if you like, anecdotical, but notphilosophical or categorical. 

The unanimous consent of mankind (let us suppose the unanimity) or, inother words, this universal longing of all human souls who have arrivedat the consciousness of their humanity, which desires to be the end andmeaning of the Universe, this longing, which is nothing but that veryessence of the soul which consists in its effort to persist eternallyand without a break in the continuity of consciousness, leads us to thehuman, anthropomorphic God, the projection of our consciousness to theConsciousness of the Universe; it leads us to the God who confers humanmeaning and finality upon the Universe and who is not the _ens summum_, the _primum movens_, nor the Creator of the Universe, nor merely theIdea-God. It leads us to the living, subjective God, for He is simplysubjectivity objectified or personality universalized--He is more than amere idea, and He is will rather than reason. God is Love--that is, Will. Reason, the Word, derives from Him, but He, the Father, is, aboveall, Will. 

"There can be no doubt whatever, " Ritschl says (_Rechtfertigung undVersöhnung_, iii. , chap. V. ), "that a very imperfect view was taken ofGod's spiritual personality in the older theology, when the functions ofknowing and willing alone were employed to illustrate it. Religiousthought plainly ascribes to God affections of feeling as well. The oldertheology, however, laboured under the impression that feeling andemotion were characteristic only of limited and created personality; ittransformed, _e. G. _, the religious idea of the Divine blessedness intoeternal self-knowledge, and that of the Divine wrath into a fixedpurpose to punish sin. " Yes, this logical God, arrived at by the _vianegationis_, was a God who, strictly speaking, neither loved nor hated, because He neither enjoyed nor suffered, an inhuman God, and His justicewas a rational or mathematical justice--that is, an injustice. 

The attributes of the living God, of the Father of Christ, must bededuced from His historical revelation in the Gospel and in theconscience of every Christian believer, and not from metaphysicalreasonings which lead only to the Nothing-God of Scotus Erigena, to therational or pantheistic God, to the atheist God--in short, to thede-personalized Divinity. 

Not by the way of reason, but only by the way of love and of suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates usfrom Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterwards we may loveHim; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him, before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this knowledge has little or nothing of the rational in it. For Godis indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him withinthe limits of our mind--that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as weattempt to define Him, there rises up before us--Nothingness. 

The idea of God, formulated by a theodicy that claims to be rational, issimply an hypothesis, like the hypotheses of ether, for example. 

Ether is, in effect, a merely hypothetical entity, valuable only in sofar as it explains that which by means of it we endeavour toexplain--light, electricity or universal gravitation--and only in so faras these facts cannot be explained in any other way. In like manner theidea of God is also an hypothesis, valuable only in so far as it enablesus to explain that which by means of if we endeavour to explain--theessence and existence of the Universe--and only so long as these cannotbe explained in any other way. And since in reality we explain theUniverse neither better nor worse with this idea than without it, theidea of God, the supreme _petitio principii_, is valueless. 

But if ether is nothing but an hypothesis explanatory of light, air, onthe other hand, is a thing that is directly felt; and even though it didnot enable us to explain the phenomenon of sound, we should neverthelessalways be directly aware of it, and, above all, of the lack of it inmoments of suffocation or air-hunger. And in the same way God Himself, not the idea of God, may become a reality that is immediately felt; andeven though the idea of Him does not enable us to explain either theexistence or the essence of the Universe, we have at times the directfeeling of God, above all in moments of spiritual suffocation. And thisfeeling--mark it well, for all that is tragic in it and the whole tragicsense of life is founded upon this--this feeling is a feeling of hungerfor God, of the lack of God. To believe in God is, in the firstinstance, as we shall see, to wish that there may be a God, to be unableto live without Him. 

So long as I pilgrimaged through the fields of reason in search of God, I could not find Him, for I was not deluded by the idea of God, neithercould I take an idea for God, and it was then, as I wandered among thewastes of rationalism, that I told myself that we ought to seek no otherconsolation than the truth, meaning thereby reason, and yet for all thatI was not comforted. But as I sank deeper and deeper into rationalscepticism on the one hand and into heart's despair on the other, thehunger for God awoke within me, and the suffocation of spirit made mefeel the want of God, and with the want of Him, His reality. And Iwished that there might be a God, that God might exist. And God does notexist, but rather super-exists, and He is sustaining our existence, existing us _(existiéndonos)_. 

God, who is Love, the Father of Love, is the son of love in us. Thereare men of a facile and external habit of mind, slaves of reason, thatreason which externalizes us, who think it a shrewd comment to say thatso far from God having made man in His image and likeness, it is ratherman who has made his gods or his God in his own image and likeness, [41]and so superficial are they that they do not pause to consider that ifthe second of these propositions be true, as in fact it is, it is owingto the fact that the first is not less true. God and man, in effect, mutually create one another; God creates or reveals Himself in man andman creates himself in God. God is His own maker, _Deus ipse se facit_, said Lactantius (_Divinarum Institutionum_, ii. , 8), and we may say thatHe is making Himself continually both in man and by man. And if each ofus, impelled by his love, by his hunger for divinity, creates forhimself an image of God according to his own desire, and if according toHis desire God creates Himself for each of us, then there is acollective, social, human God, the resultant of all the humanimaginations that imagine Him. For God is and reveals Himself incollectivity. And God is the richest and most personal of humanconceptions. 

The Master of divinity has bidden us be perfect as our Father who is inheaven is perfect (Matt. V. 48), and in the sphere of thought andfeeling our perfection consists in the zeal with which we endeavour toequate our imagination with the total imagination of the humanity ofwhich in God we form a part. 

The logical theory of the opposition between the extension and thecomprehension of a concept, the one increasing in the ratio in which theother diminishes, is well known. The concept that is most extensive andat the same time least comprehensive is that of being or of thing, whichembraces everything that exists and possesses no other distinguishingquality than that of being; while the concept that is most comprehensiveand least extensive is that of the Universe, which is only applicable toitself and comprehends all existing qualities. And the logical orrational God, the God obtained by way of negation, the absolute entity, merges, like reality itself, into nothingness; for, as Hegel pointedout, pure being and pure nothingness are identical. And the God of theheart, the God who is felt, the God of living men, is the Universeitself conceived as personality, is the consciousness of the Universe. AGod universal and personal, altogether different from the individual Godof a rigid metaphysical monotheism. 

I must advert here once again to my view of the opposition that existsbetween individuality and personality, notwithstanding the fact that theone demands the other. Individuality is, if I may so express it, thecontinent or thing which contains, personality the content or thingcontained, or I might say that my personality is in a certain sense mycomprehension, that which I comprehend or embrace within myself--whichis in a certain way the whole Universe--and that my individuality is myextension; the one my infinite, the other my finite. A hundred jars ofhard earthenware are strongly individualized, but it is possible forthem to be all equally empty or all equally full of the same homogeneousliquid, whereas two bladders of so delicate a membrane as to admit ofthe action of osmosis and exosmosis may be strongly differentiated andcontain liquids of a very mixed composition. And thus a man, in so faras he is an individual, may be very sharply detached from others, a sortof spiritual crustacean, and yet be very poor in differentiatingcontent. And further, it is true on the other hand that the morepersonality a man has and the greater his interior richness and the morehe is a society within himself, the less brusquely he is divided fromhis fellows. In the same way the rigid God of deism, of Aristotelianmonotheism, the _ens summum_, is a being in whom individuality, orrather simplicity, stifles personality. Definition kills him, for todefine is to impose boundaries, it is to limit, and it is impossible todefine the absolutely indefinable. This God lacks interior richness; heis not a society in himself. And this the vital revelation obviated bythe belief in the Trinity, which makes God a society and even a familyin himself and no longer a pure individual. The God of faith ispersonal; He is a person because He includes three persons, forpersonality is not sensible of itself in isolation. An isolated personceases to be a person, for whom should he love? And if he does not love, he is not a person. Nor can a simple being love himself without his loveexpanding him into a compound being. 

It was because God was felt as a Father that the belief in the Trinityarose. For a God-Father cannot be a single, that is, a solitary, God. Afather is always the father of a family. And the fact that God was feltas a father acted as a continual incentive to conceive Him not merelyanthropomorphically--that is to say, as a man, _anthropos_--butandromorphically, as a male, _anêr_. In the popular Christianimagination, in effect, God the Father is conceived of as a male. Andthe reason is that man, _homo_, _anthropos_, as we know him, isnecessarily either a male, _vir_, _anêr_, or a female, _mulier_, _gynê_. Andto these may be added the child, who is neuter. And hence in order tosatisfy imaginatively this necessity of feeling God as a perfectman--that is, as a family--arose the cult of the God-Mother, the VirginMary, and the cult of the Child Jesus. 

The cult of the Virgin, Mariolatry, which, by the gradual elevation ofthe divine element in the Virgin has led almost to her deification, answers merely to the demand of the feeling that God should be a perfectman, that God should include in His nature the feminine element. Theprogressive exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the work of Catholic piety, having its beginning in the expression Mother of God, _theotokos_, _deipara_, has culminated in attributing to her the status ofco-redeemer and in the dogmatic declaration of her conception withoutthe stain of original sin. Hence she now occupies a position betweenHumanity and Divinity and nearer Divinity than Humanity. And it has beensurmised that in course of time she may perhaps even come to be regardedas yet another personal manifestation of the Godhead. 

And yet this might not necessarily involve the conversion of the Trinityinto a Quaternity. If _pneuma_, in Greek, spirit, instead of being neuterhad been feminine, who can say that the Virgin Mary might not alreadyhave become an incarnation or humanization of the Holy Spirit? Thatfervent piety which always knows how to mould theological speculation inaccordance with its own desires would have found sufficient warranty forsuch a doctrine in the text of the Gospel, in Luke's narrative of theAnnunciation where the angel Gabriel hails Mary with the words, "TheHoly Spirit shall come upon thee, " _pneuma agion epeleusetai epi se_ (Lukei. 35). And thus a dogmatic evolution would have been effected parallelto that of the divinization of Jesus, the Son, and his identificationwith the Word. 

In any case the cult of the Virgin, of the eternal feminine, or ratherof the divine feminine, of the divine maternity, helps to complete thepersonalization of God by constituting Him a family. 

In one of my books (_Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_, part ii. , chap. Lxvii. ) I have said that "God was and is, in our mind, masculine. In Hismode of judging and condemning men, He acts as a male, not as a humanperson above the limitation of sex; He acts as a father. And tocounterbalance this, the Mother element was required, the Mother whoalways forgives, the Mother whose arms are always open to the child whenhe flies from the frowning brow or uplifted hand of the angry father;the Mother in whose bosom we seek the dim, comforting memory of thatwarmth and peace of our pre-natal unconsciousness, of that milkysweetness that soothed our dreams of innocence; the Mother who knows nojustice but that of forgiveness, no law but that of love. Our weak andimperfect conception of God as a God with a long beard and a voice ofthunder, of a God who promulgates laws and pronounces dooms, of a Godwho is the Master of a household, a Roman Paterfamilias, requiredcounterpoise and complement, and since fundamentally we are unable toconceive of the personal and living God as exalted above human and evenmasculine characteristics, and still less as a neutral or hermaphroditeGod, we have recourse to providing Him with a feminine God, and by theside of the God-Father we have placed the Goddess-Mother, she who alwaysforgives, because, since she sees with love-blind eyes, she sees alwaysthe hidden cause of the fault and in that hidden cause the only justiceof forgiveness . . . "

And to this I must now add that not only are we unable to conceive ofthe full and living God as masculine simply, but we are unable toconceive of Him as individual simply, as the projection of a solitary I, an unsocial I, an I that is in reality an abstract I. My living I is anI that is really a We; my living personal I lives only in other, ofother, and by other I's; I am sprung, from a multitude of ancestors, Icarry them within me in extract, and at the same time I carry within me, potentially, a multitude of descendants, and God, the projection of my Ito the infinite--or rather I, the projection of God to the finite--mustalso be multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God--thatis to say, in order to save the living God--faith's need--the need ofthe feeling and the imagination--of conceiving Him and; feeling Him aspossessed of a certain internal multiplicity. 

This need the pagan feeling of a living divinity obviated by polytheism. It is the agglomeration of its gods, the republic of them, that reallyconstitutes its Divinity. The real God of Hellenic paganism is not somuch Father Zeus (_Jupiter_) as the whole society of gods and demi-gods. Hence the solemnity of the invocation of Demosthenes when he invoked allthe gods and all the goddesses: _tois theohis euchomai pasi kahi pasais_. And when the rationalizers converted the term god, _theos_, which isproperly an adjective, a quality predicated of each one of the gods, into a substantive, and added the definite article to it, they produced_the_ god, _o theos_, the dead and abstract god of philosophicalrationalism, a substantivized quality and therefore void of personality. For the masculine concrete god (_el_ dios) is nothing but the neuterabstract divine quality (_lo_ divino). Now the transition from feelingthe divinity in all things to substantivating it and converting theDivinity into God, cannot be achieved without feeling undergoing acertain risk. And the Aristotelian God, the God of the logical proofs, is nothing more than the Divinity, a concept and not a living person whocan be felt and with whom through love man can communicate. This God ismerely a substantivized adjective; He is a constitutional God whoreigns but does not govern, and Knowledge is His constitutional charter. 

And even in Greco-Latin paganism itself the tendency towards a livingmonotheism is apparent in the fact that Zeus was conceived of and feltas a father, _Zeus patêr_, as Homer calls him, the _Ju-piter_ or_Ju-pater_ of the Latins, and as a father of a whole widely extendedfamily of gods and goddesses who together with him constituted theDivinity. 

The conjunction of pagan polytheism with Judaic monotheism, which hadendeavoured by other means to save the personality of God, gave birth tothe feeling of the Catholic God, a God who is a society, as the paganGod of whom I have spoken was a society, and who at the same time isone, as the God of Israel finally became one. Such is the ChristianTrinity, whose deepest sense rationalistic deism has scarcely eversucceeded in understanding, that deism, which though more or lessimpregnated with Christianity, always remains Unitarian or Socinian. 

And the truth is that we feel God less as a superhuman consciousnessthan as the actual consciousness of the whole human race, past, present, and future, as the collective consciousness of the whole race, and stillmore, as the total and infinite consciousness which embraces andsustains all consciousnesses, infra-human, human, and perhaps, super-human. The divinity that there is in everything, from thelowest--that is to say, from the least conscious--of living forms, tothe highest, including our own human consciousness, this divinity wefeel to be personalized, conscious of itself, in God. And this gradationof consciousnesses, this sense of the gulf between the human and thefully divine, the universal, consciousness, finds its counterpart in thebelief in angels with their different hierarchies, as intermediariesbetween our human consciousness and that of God. And these gradations afaith consistent with itself must believe to be infinite, for only by aninfinite number of degrees is it possible to pass from the finite to theinfinite. 

Deistic rationalism conceives God as the Reason of the Universe, but itslogic compels it to conceive Him as an impersonal reason--that is tosay, as an idea--while deistic vitalism feels and imagines God asConsciousness, and therefore as a person or rather as a society ofpersons. The consciousness of each one of us, in effect, is a society ofpersons; in me there are various I's and even the I's of those amongwhom I live, live in me. 

The God of deistic rationalism, in effect, the God of the logical proofsof His existence, the _ens realissimum_ and the immobile prime mover, isnothing more than a Supreme Reason, but in the same sense in which wecan call the law of universal gravitation the reason of the falling ofbodies, this law being merely the explanation of the phenomenon. Butwill anyone say that that which we call the law of universalgravitation, or any other law or mathematical principle, is a true andindependent reality, that it is an angel, that it is something whichpossesses consciousness of itself and others, that it is a person? No, it is nothing but an idea without any reality outside of the mind of himwho conceives it. And similarly this God-Reason either possessesconsciousness of himself or he possesses no reality outside the mindthat conceives him. And if he possesses consciousness of himself, hebecomes a personal reason, and then all the value of the traditionalproofs disappears, for these proofs only proved a reason, but not asupreme consciousness. Mathematics prove an order, a constancy, a reasonin the series of mechanical phenomena, but they 'do not prove that thisreason is conscious of itself. This reason is a logical necessity, butthe logical necessity does not prove the teleological or finalistnecessity. And where there is no finality there is no personality, thereis no consciousness. 

The rational God, therefore--that is to say, the God who is simply theReason of the Universe and nothing more--consummates his owndestruction, is destroyed in our mind in so far as he is such a God, andis only born again in us when we feel him in our heart as a livingperson, as Consciousness, and no longer merely as the impersonal andobjective Reason of the Universe. If we wish for a rational explanationof the construction of a machine, all that we require to know is themechanical science of its constructor; but if we would have a reason forthe existence of such a machine, then, since it is the work not ofNature but of man, we must suppose a conscious, constructive being. Butthe second part of this reasoning is not applicable to God, even thoughit be said that in Him the mechanical science and the mechanician, bymeans of which the machine was constructed, are one and the same thing. From the rational point of view this identification is merely a beggingof the question. And thus it is that reason destroys this SupremeReason, in so far as the latter is a person. 

The human reason, in effect, is a reason that is based upon theirrational, upon the total vital consciousness, upon will and feeling;our human reason is not a reason that can prove to us the existence of aSupreme Reason, which in its turn would have to be based upon theSupreme Irrational, upon the Universal Consciousness. And the revelationof this Supreme Consciousness in our feeling and imagination, by love, by faith, by the process of personalization, is that which leads us tobelieve in the living God. 

And this God, the living God, your God, our God, is in me, is in you, lives in us, and we live and move and have our being in Him. And He isin us by virtue of the hunger, the longing, which we have for Him, He isHimself creating the longing for Himself. And He is the God of thehumble, for in the words of the Apostle, God chose the foolish things ofthe world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world toconfound the things which are mighty (i Cor. I. 27). And God is in eachone of us in the measure in which each one feels Him and loves Him. "Ifof two men, " says Kierkegaard, "one prays to the true God withoutsincerity of heart, and the other prays to an idol with all the passionof an infinite yearning, it is the first who really prays to an idol, while the second really prays to God. " It would be better to say thatthe true God is He to whom man truly prays and whom man truly desires. And there may even be a truer revelation in superstition itself than intheology. The venerable Father of the long beard and white locks whoappears among the clouds carrying the globe of the world in his hand ismore living and more real than the _ens realissimum_ of theodicy. 

Reason is an analytical, that is, a dissolving force, whenever ittransfers its activity from the form of intuitions, whether those of theindividual instinct of preservation or those of the social instinct ofperpetuation, and applies it to the essence and matter of them. Reasonorders the sensible perceptions which give us the material world; butwhen its analysis is exercised upon the reality of the perceptionsthemselves, it dissolves them and plunges us into a world ofappearances, a world of shadows without consistency, for outside thedomain of the formal, reason is nihilist and annihilating. And itperforms the same terrible office when we withdraw it from its properdomain and apply it to the scrutiny of the imaginative intuitions whichgive us the spiritual world. For reason annihilates and imaginationcompletes, integrates or totalizes; reason by itself alone kills, and itis imagination that gives life. If it is true that imagination by itselfalone, in giving us life without limit, leads us to lose our identity inthe All and also kills us as individuals, it kills us by excess of life. Reason, the head, speaks to us the word Nothing! imagination, the heart, the word All! and between all and nothing, by the fusion of the all andthe nothing within us, we live in God, who is All, and God lives in uswho, without Him, are nothing. Reason reiterates, Vanity of vanities!all is vanity! And imagination answers, Plenitude of plenitudes! all isplenitude! And thus we live the vanity of plenitude or the plenitude ofvanity. 

And so deeply rooted in the depths of man's being is this vital need ofliving a world[42] illogical, irrational, personal or divine, that thosewho do not believe in God, or believe that they do not believe in Him, believe nevertheless in some little pocket god or even devil of theirown, or in an omen, or in a horseshoe picked up by chance on theroadside and carried about with them to bring them good luck and defendthem from that very reason whose loyal and devoted henchmen they imaginethemselves to be. 

The God whom we hunger after is the God to whom we pray, the God of the_Pater Noster_, of the Lord's Prayer; the God whom we beseech, beforeall and above all, and whether we are aware of it or not, to instilfaith into us, to make us believe in Him, to make Himself in us, the Godto whom we pray that His name may be hallowed and that His will may bedone--His will, not His reason--on earth as it is in heaven; but feelingthat His will cannot be other than the essence of our will, the desireto persist eternally. 

And such a God is the God of love--_how_ He is it profits us not to ask, but rather let each consult his own heart and give his imagination leaveto picture Him in the remoteness of the Universe, gazing down upon himwith those myriad eyes of His that shine in the night-darkened heavens. He in whom you believe, reader, He is your God, He who has lived withyou and within you, who was born with you, who was a child when you werea child, who became a man according as you became a man, who will vanishwhen you yourself vanish, and who is your principle of continuity inthe spiritual life, for He is the principle of solidarity among all menand in each man and between men and the Universe, and He is, as you are, a person. And if you believe in God, God believes in you, and believingin you He creates you continually. For in your essence you are nothingbut the idea that God possesses of you--but a living idea, because theidea of a God who is living and conscious of Himself, of aGod-Consciousness, and apart from what you are in the society of God youare nothing. 

How to define God? Yes, that is our longing. That was the longing of theman Jacob, when, after wrestling all the night until the breaking of theday with that divine visitant, he cried, "Tell me, I pray thee, thyname!" (Gen. Xxxii. 29). Listen to the words of that great Christianpreacher, Frederick William Robertson, in a sermon preached in TrinityChapel, Brighton, on the 10th of June, 1849: "And this is ourstruggle--_the_ struggle. Let any true man go down into the deeps of hisown being, and answer us--what is the cry that comes from the most realpart of his nature? Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob asked for thatin his _first_ communing with God--preservation, safety. Is it eventhis--to be forgiven our sins? Jacob had a sin to be forgiven, and inthat most solemn moment of his existence he did not say a syllable aboutit. Or is it this--'Hallowed be Thy name'? No, my brethren. Out of ourfrail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in the earthlierhours of our religion may be this--'Save my soul'; but in the mostunearthly moments it is this--'Tell me thy name. ' We move through aworld of mystery; and the deepest question is, What is the being that isever near, sometimes felt, never seen; that which has haunted us fromchildhood with a dream of something surpassingly fair, which has neveryet been realized; that which sweeps through the soul at times as adesolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness; that which hastouched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered withagony, and our mortal affections have shrivelled up with pain; thatwhich comes to us in aspirations of nobleness and conceptions ofsuperhuman excellence? Shall we say It or He? What is It? Who is He?Those anticipations of Immortality and God--what are they? Are they themere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a livingsomething beside me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, echoingthrough the vast void of Nothingness? or shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside me? Tell me Thy name, thou awful mystery of Loveliness! This is the struggle of all earnestlife. "[43]

Thus Robertson. To which I must add this comment, that Tell me thy nameis essentially the same as Save my soul! We ask Him His name in orderthat He may save our soul, that He may save the human soul, that He maysave the human finality of the Universe. And if they tell us that He iscalled He, that He is the _ens realissimum_ or the Supreme Being or anyother metaphysical name, we are not contented, for we know that everymetaphysical name is an X, and we go on asking Him His name. And thereis only one name that satisfies our longing, and that is the nameSaviour, Jesus. God is the love that saves. As Browning said in his_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, For the loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. 

The essence of the divine is Love, Will that personalizes andeternalizes, that feels the hunger for eternity and infinity. 

It is ourselves, it is our eternity that we seek in God, it is ourdivinization. It was Browning again who said, in _Saul_, 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek In the Godhead!

But this God who saves us, this personal God, the Consciousness of theUniverse who envelops and sustains our consciousnesses, this God whogives human finality to the whole creation--does He exist? Have weproofs of His existence?

This question leads in the first place to an enquiry into the cleaningof this notion of existence. What is it to exist and in what sense do wespeak of things as not existing?

In its etymological signification to exist is to be outside ofourselves, outside of our mind: _ex-sistere_. But is there anythingoutside of our mind, outside of our consciousness which embraces the sumof the known? Undoubtedly there is. The matter of knowledge comes to usfrom without. And what is the mode of this matter? It is impossible forus to know, for to know is to clothe matter with form, and hence wecannot know the formless as formless. To do so would be tantamount toinvesting chaos with order. 

This problem of the existence of God, a problem that is rationallyinsoluble, is really identical with the problem of consciousness, of the_ex-sistentia_ and not of the _in-sistentia_ of consciousness, it isnone other than the problem of the substantial existence of the soul, the problem of the perpetuity of the human soul, the problem of thehuman finality of the Universe itself. To believe in a living andpersonal God, in an eternal and universal consciousness that knows andloves us, is to believe that the Universe exists _for_ man. For man, orfor a consciousness of the same order as the human consciousness, of thesame nature, although sublimated, a consciousness that is capable ofknowing us, in the depth of whose being our memory may live for ever. Perhaps, as I have said before, by a supreme and desperate effort ofresignation we might succeed in making the sacrifice of our personalityprovided that we knew that at our death it would go to enrich a SupremePersonality; provided that we knew that the Universal Soul was nourishedby our souls and had need of them. We might perhaps meet death with adesperate resignation or with a resigned despair, delivering up our soulto the soul of humanity, bequeathing to it our work, the work that bearsthe impress of our person, if it were certain that this humanity weredestined to bequeath its soul in its turn to another soul, when at longlast consciousness shall have become extinct upon this desire-tormentedEarth. But is it certain?

And if the soul of humanity is eternal, if the human collectiveconsciousness is eternal, if there is a Consciousness of the Universe, and if this Consciousness is eternal, why must our own individualconsciousness--yours, reader, mine--be not eternal?

In the vast all of the Universe, must there be this unique anomaly--aconsciousness that knows itself, loves itself and feels itself, joinedto an organism which can only live within such and such degrees of heat, a merely transitory phenomenon? No, it is not mere curiosity thatinspires the wish to know whether or not the stars are inhabited byliving organisms, by consciousnesses akin to our own, and a profoundlonging enters into that dream that our souls shall pass from star tostar through the vast spaces of the heavens, in an infinite series oftransmigrations. The feeling of the divine makes us wish and believethat everything is animated, that consciousness, in a greater or lessdegree, extends through everything. We wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. And therefore God. Such is Hisfinality as we feel it. 

What would a universe be without any consciousness capable of reflectingit and knowing it? What would objectified reason be without will andfeeling? For us it would be equivalent to nothing--a thousand times moredreadful than nothing. 

If such a supposition is reality, our life is deprived of sense andvalue. 

It is not, therefore, rational necessity, but vital anguish that impelsus to believe in God. And to believe in God--I must reiterate it yetagain--is, before all and above all, to feel a hunger for God, a hungerfor divinity, to be sensible of His lack and absence, to wish that Godmay exist. And it is to wish to save the human finality of the Universe. For one might even come to resign oneself to being absorbed by God, ifit be that our consciousness is based upon a Consciousness, ifconsciousness is the end of the Universe. 

"The wicked man hath said in his heart, There is no God. " And this istruth. For in his head the righteous man may say to himself, God doesnot exist! But only the wicked can say it in his heart. Not to believethat there is a God or to believe that there is not a God, is one thing;to resign oneself to there not being a God is another thing, and it is aterrible and inhuman thing; but not to wish that there be a God exceedsevery other moral monstrosity; although, as a matter of fact, those whodeny God deny Him because of their despair at not finding Him. 

And now reason once again confronts us with the Sphinx-likequestion--the Sphinx, in effect, is reason--Does God exist? This eternaland eternalizing person who gives meaning--and I will add, a humanmeaning, for there is none other--to the Universe, is it a substantialsomething, existing independently of our consciousness, independently ofour desire? Here we arrive at the insoluble, and it is best that itshould be so. Let it suffice for reason that it cannot prove theimpossibility of His existence. 

To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is toact as if He existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it theinner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begetshope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of thisdivine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness. 

Let us see how this may be. 

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Lecture I. , p. 36. London, 1895, Black. 

[39] _No quiero acordarme_, a phrase that is always associated inSpanish literature with the opening sentence of _Don Quijote: En anlugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme_. --J. E. C. F. 

[40] W. Hermann, _Christlich systematische Dogmatik_, in the volumeentitled _Systematische christliche Religion. Die Kultur der Gegenwart_series, published by P. Hinneberg. 

[41] _Dieu a fait l'homme à son image, mais l'homme le lui a bienrendu_, Voltaire. --J. E. C. F. 

[42] _Vivir un mundo_. 

[43] _Sermons_, by the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson. First series, sermoniii. , "Jacob's Wrestling. " Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübuer and Co. , London, 1898. 

IX

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY

Sanctius ac reverentius visum de actis deorum credere quamscire. --TACITUS: _Germania_, 34. 

The road that leads us to the living God, the God of the heart, and thatleads us back to Him when we have left Him for the lifeless God oflogic, is the road of faith, not of rational or mathematical conviction. 

And what is faith?

This is the question propounded in the Catechism of Christian Doctrinethat was taught us at school, and the answer runs: Faith is believingwhat we have not seen. 

This, in an essay written some twelve years ago, I amended as follows:"Believing what we have not seen, no! but creating what we do not see. "And I have already told you that believing in God is, in the firstinstance at least, wishing that God may be, longing for the existence ofGod. 

The theological virtue of faith, according to the Apostle Paul, whosedefinition serves as the basis of the traditional Christiandisquisitions upon it, is "the substance of things hoped for, theevidence of things not seen, " _elpizomevôn hupostasis, pragmatônelegchos ou blepomenôn_ (Heb. Xi. 1). 

The substance, or rather the support and basis, of hope, the guaranteeof it. That which connects, or, rather than connects, subordinates, faith to hope. And in fact we do not hope because we believe, but ratherwe believe because we hope. It is hope in God, it is the ardent longingthat there may be a God who guarantees the eternity of consciousness, that leads us to believe in Him. 

But faith, which after all is something compound, comprising acognitive, logical, or rational element together with an affective, biotic, sentimental, and strictly irrational element, is presented to usunder the form of knowledge. And hence the insuperable difficulty ofseparating it from some dogma or other. Pure faith, free from dogmas, about which I wrote a great deal years ago, is a phantasm. Neither isthe difficulty overcome by inventing the theory of faith in faithitself. Faith needs a matter to work upon. 

Believing is a form of knowing, even if it be no more than a knowing andeven a formulating of our vital longing. In ordinary language the term"believing, " however, is used in a double and even a contradictorysense. It may express, on the one hand, the highest degree of the mind'sconviction of the truth of a thing, and, on the other hand, it may implymerely a weak and hesitating persuasion of its truth. For if in onesense believing expresses the firmest kind of assent we are capable ofgiving, the expression "I believe that it is so, although I am not sureof it, " is nevertheless common in ordinary speech. 

And this agrees with what we have said above with respect to uncertaintyas the basis of faith. The most robust faith, in so far as it isdistinguished from all other knowledge that is not _pistic_ or offaith--faithful, as we might say--is based on uncertainty. And this isbecause faith, the guarantee of things hoped for, is not so muchrational adhesion to a theoretical principle as trust in a person whoassures us of something. Faith supposes an objective, personal element. We do not so much believe something as believe someone who promises usor assures us of this or the other thing. We believe in a person and inGod in so far as He is a person and a personalization of the Universe. 

This personal or religious element in faith is evident. Faith, it issaid, is in itself neither theoretical knowledge nor rational adhesionto a truth, nor yet is its essence sufficiently explained by defining itas trust in God. Seeberg says of faith that it is "the inward submissionto the spiritual authority of God, immediate obedience. And in so far asthis obedience is the means of attaining a rational principle, faith isa personal conviction. "[44]

The faith which St. Paul defined, _pistis_ in Greek, is bettertranslated as trust, confidence. The word _pistis_ is derived from theverb _peithô_, which in its active voice means to persuade and in itsmiddle voice to trust in someone, to esteem him as worthy of trust, toplace confidence in him, to obey. And _fidare se_, to trust, is derivedfrom the root _fid_--whence _fides_, faith, and also confidence. TheGreek root _pith_ and the Latin _fid_ are twin brothers. In the root ofthe word "faith" itself, therefore, there is implicit the idea ofconfidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidenceis placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we conceive assomething personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is somethingimpersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in theperson who gives us hope, that we believe, not directly and immediatelyin truth itself or in hope itself. 

And this personal or rather personifying element in faith extends evento the lowest forms of it, for it is this that produces faith inpseudo-revelation, in inspiration, in miracle. There is a story of aParisian doctor, who, when he found that a quack-healer was drawing awayhis clientèle, removed to a quarter of the city as distant as possiblefrom his former abode, where he was totally unknown, and here he gavehimself out as a quack-healer and conducted himself as such. When he wasdenounced as an illegal practitioner he produced his doctor'scertificate, and explained his action more or less as follows: "I amindeed a doctor, but if I had announced myself as such I should nothave had as large a clientèle as I have as a quack-healer. Now that allmy clients know that I have studied medicine, however, and that I am aproperly qualified medical man, they will desert me in favour of somequack who can assure them that he has never studied, but cures simply byinspiration. " And true it is that a doctor is discredited when it isproved that he has never studied medicine and possesses no qualifyingcertificate, and that a quack is discredited when it is proved that hehas studied and is a qualified practitioner. For some believe in scienceand in study, while others believe in the person, in inspiration, andeven in ignorance. 

"There is one distinction in the world's geography which comesimmediately to our minds when we thus state the different thoughts anddesires of men concerning their religion. We remember how the wholeworld is in general divided into two hemispheres upon this matter. Onehalf of the world--the great dim East--is mystic. It insists upon notseeing anything too clearly. Make any one of the great ideas of lifedistinct and clear, and immediately it seems to the Oriental to beuntrue. He has an instinct which tells him that the vastest thoughts aretoo vast for the human mind, and that if they are made to presentthemselves in forms of statement which the human mind can comprehend, their nature is violated and their strength is lost. 

"On the other hand, the Occidental, the man of the West, demandsclearness and is impatient with mystery. He loves a definite statementas much as his brother of the East dislikes it. He insists on knowingwhat the eternal and infinite forces mean to his personal life, how theywill make him personally happier and better, almost how they will buildthe house over his head, and cook the dinner on his hearth. This is thedifference between the East and the West, between man on the banks ofthe Ganges and man on the banks of the Mississippi. Plenty ofexceptions, of course, there are--mystics in Boston and St. Louis, hard-headed men of facts in Bombay and Calcutta. The two greatdispositions cannot be shut off from one another by an ocean or a rangeof mountains. In some nations and places--as, for instance, among theJews and in our own New England--they notably commingle. But in generalthey thus divide the world between them. The East lives in the moonlightof mystery, the West in the sunlight of scientific fact. The East criesout to the Eternal for vague impulses. The West seizes the present withlight hands, and will not let it go till it has furnished it withreasonable, intelligible motives. Each misunderstands, distrusts, and inlarge degree despises the other. But the two hemispheres together, andnot either one by itself, make up the total world. " Thus, in one of hissermons, spoke the great Unitarian preacher Phillips Brooks, late Bishopof Massachusetts (_The Mystery of Iniquity and Other Sermons_, sermonxvi. ). 

We might rather say that throughout the whole world, in the East as wellas in the West, rationalists seek definition and believe in the concept, while vitalists seek inspiration and believe in the person. The formerscrutinize the Universe in order that they may wrest its secrets fromit; the latter pray to the Consciousness of the Universe, strive toplace themselves in immediate relationship with the Soul of the World, with God, in order that they may find the guarantee or substance of whatthey hope for, which is not to die, and the evidence of what they do notsee. 

And since a person is a will, and will always has reference to thefuture, he who believes, believes in what is to come--that is, in whathe hopes for. We do not believe, strictly speaking, in what is or inwhat was, except as the guarantee, as the substance, of what will be. For the Christian, to believe in the resurrection of Christ--that is tosay, in tradition and in the Gospel, which assure him that Christ hasrisen, both of them personal forces--is to believe that he himself willone day rise again by the grace of Christ. And even scientificfaith--for such there is--refers to the future and is an act of trust. The man of science believes that at a certain future date an eclipse ofthe sun will take place; he believes that the laws which have governedthe world hitherto will continue to govern it. 

To believe, I repeat, is to place confidence in someone, and it hasreference to a person. I say that I know that there is an animal calledthe horse, and that it has such and such characteristics, because I haveseen it; and I say that I believe in the existence of the giraffe or theornithorhyncus, and that it possesses such and such qualities, because Ibelieve those who assure me that they have seen it. And hence theelement of uncertainty attached to faith, for it is possible that aperson may be deceived or that he may deceive us. 

But, on the other hand, this personal element in belief gives it aneffective and loving character, and above all, in religious faith, areference to what is hoped for. Perhaps there is nobody who wouldsacrifice his life for the sake of maintaining that the three angles ofa triangle are together equal to two right angles, for such a truth doesnot demand the sacrifice of our life; but, on the other hand, there aremany who have lost their lives for the sake of maintaining theirreligious faith. Indeed it is truer to say that martyrs make faith thanthat faith makes martyrs. For faith is not the mere adherence of theintellect to an abstract principle; it is not the recognition of atheoretical truth, a process in which the will merely sets in motion ourfaculty of comprehension; faith is an act of the will--it is a movementof the soul towards a practical truth, towards a person, towardssomething that makes us not merely comprehend life, but that makes uslive. [45]

Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependentupon reason, has its well-spring and source of power elsewhere, insomething supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a manof singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind, has saidthat it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous thatgives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of thereason lead to nothing but affliction of spirit (_Traité del'enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dansl'histoire_, § 329). And in truth we wish to live. 

But, although we have said that faith is a thing of the will, it wouldperhaps be better to say that it is will itself--the will not to die, or, rather, that it is some other psychic force distinct fromintelligence, will, and feeling. We should thus have feeling, knowing, willing, and believing or creating. For neither feeling, norintelligence, nor will creates; they operate upon a material alreadygiven, upon the material given them by faith. Faith is the creativepower in man. But since it has a more intimate relation with the willthan with any other of his faculties, we conceive it under the form ofvolition. It should be borne in mind, however, that wishing tobelieve--that is to say, wishing to create--is not precisely the same asbelieving or creating, although it is its starting-point. 

Faith, therefore, if not a creative force, is the fruit of the will, andits function is to create. Faith, in a certain sense, creates itsobject. And faith in God consists in creating God; and since it is Godwho gives us faith in Himself, it is God who is continually creatingHimself in us. Therefore St. Augustine said: "I will seek Thee, Lord, bycalling upon Thee, and I will call upon Thee by believing in Thee. Myfaith calls upon Thee, Lord, the faith which Thou hast given me, withwhich Thou hast inspired me through the Humanity of Thy Son, through theministry of Thy preacher" (_Confessions_, book i. , chap. I. ). The powerof creating God in our own image and likeness, of personalizing theUniverse, simply means that we carry God within us, as the substance ofwhat we hope for, and that God is continually creating us in His ownimage and likeness. 

And we create God--that is to say, God creates Himself in us--bycompassion, by love. To believe in God is to love Him, and in our loveto fear Him; and we begin by loving Him even before knowing Him, and byloving Him we come at last to see and discover Him in all things. 

Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fearHim, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught themthat God exists, and these in their turn often enough do not believe inHim either. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without anypassion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-Idea, not in God Himself. And just as belief inGod is born of love, so also it may be born of fear, and even of hate, and of such kind was the belief of Vanni Fucci, the thief, whom Dantedepicts insulting God with obscene gestures in Hell (_Inf. _, xxv. , 1-3). For the devils also believe in God, and not a few atheists. 

Is it not perhaps a mode of believing in God, this fury with which thosedeny and even insult Him, who, because they cannot bring themselves tobelieve in Him, wish that He may not exist? Like those who believe, they, too, wish that God may exist; but being men of a weak and passiveor of an evil disposition, in whom reason is stronger than will, theyfeel themselves caught in the grip of reason and haled along in theirown despite, and they fall into despair, and because of their despairthey deny, and in their denial they affirm and create the thing thatthey deny, and God reveals Himself in them, affirming Himself by theirvery denial of Him. 

But it will be objected to all this that to demonstrate that faithcreates its own object is to demonstrate that this object is an objectfor faith alone, that outside faith it has no objective reality; justas, on the other hand, to maintain that faith is necessary because itaffords consolation to the masses of the people, or imposes a wholesomerestraint upon them, is to declare that the object of faith is illusory. What is certain is that for thinking believers to-day, faith is, beforeall and above all, wishing that God may exist. 

Wishing that God may exist, and acting and feeling as if He did exist. And desiring God's existence and acting conformably with this desire, isthe means whereby we create God--that is, whereby God creates Himself inus, manifests Himself to us, opens and reveals Himself to us. For Godgoes out to meet him who seeks Him with love and by love, and hidesHimself from him who searches for Him with the cold and loveless reason. God wills that the heart should have rest, but not the head, reversingthe order of the physical life in which the head sleeps and rests attimes while the heart wakes and works unceasingly. And thus knowledgewithout love leads us away from God; and love, even without knowledge, and perhaps better without it, leads us to God, and through God towisdom. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!

And if you should ask me how I believe in God--that is to say, how Godcreates Himself in me and reveals Himself to me--my answer may, perhaps, provoke your smiles or your laughter, or it may even scandalize you. 

I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breathof His affection, feel His invisible and intangible hand, drawing me, leading me, grasping me; because I possess an inner consciousness of aparticular providence and of a universal mind that marks out for me thecourse of my own destiny. And the concept of law--it is nothing but aconcept after all!--tells me nothing and teaches me nothing. 

Once and again in my life I have seen myself suspended in a trance overthe abyss; once and again I have found myself at the cross-roads, confronted by a choice of ways and aware that in choosing one I shouldbe renouncing all the others--for there is no turning back upon theseroads of life; and once and again in such unique moments as these I havefelt the impulse of a mighty power, conscious, sovereign, and loving. And then, before the feet of the wayfarer, opens out the way of theLord. 

It is possible for a man to feel the Universe calling to him and guidinghim as one person guides and calls to another, to hear within him itsvoice speaking without words and saying: "Go and preach to all peoples!"How do you know that the man you see before you possesses aconsciousness like you, and that an animal also possesses such aconsciousness, more or less dimly, but not a stone? Because the man actstowards you like a man, like a being made in your likeness, and becausethe stone does not act towards you at all, but suffers you to act uponit. And in the same way I believe that the Universe possesses a certainconsciousness like myself, because its action towards me is a humanaction, and I feel that it is a personality that environs me. 

Here is a formless mass; it appears to be a kind of animal; it isimpossible to distinguish its members; I only see two eyes, eyes whichgaze at me with a human gaze, the gaze of a fellow-being, a gaze whichasks for pity; and I hear it breathing. I conclude that in this formlessmass there is a consciousness. In just such a way and none other, thestarry-eyed heavens gaze down upon the believer, with a superhuman, adivine, gaze, a gaze that asks for supreme pity and supreme love, and inthe serenity of the night he hears the breathing of God, and God toucheshim in his heart of hearts and reveals Himself to him. It is theUniverse, living, suffering, loving, and asking for love. 

From loving little trifling material things, which lightly come andlightly go, having no deep root in our affections, we come to love themore lasting things, the things which our hands cannot grasp; fromloving goods we come to love the Good; from loving beautiful things wecome to love Beauty; from loving the true we come to love the Truth;from loving pleasures we come to love Happiness; and, last of all, wecome to love Love. We emerge from ourselves in order to penetratefurther into our supreme I; individual consciousness emerges from us inorder to submerge itself in the total Consciousness of which we form apart, but without being dissolved in it. And God is simply the Love thatsprings from universal suffering and becomes consciousness. 

But this, it will be said, is merely to revolve in an iron ring, forsuch a God is not objective. And at this point it may not be out ofplace to give reason its due and to examine exactly what is meant by athing existing, being objective. 

What is it, in effect, to exist? and when do we say that a thing exists?A thing exists when it is placed outside us, and in such a way that itshall have preceded our perception of it and be capable of continuing tosubsist outside us after we have disappeared. But have I any certaintythat anything has preceded me or that anything must survive me? Can myconsciousness know that there is anything outside it? Everything that Iknow or can know is within my consciousness. We will not entangleourselves, therefore, in the insoluble problem of an objectivity outsideour perceptions. Things exist in so far as they act. To exist is to act. 

But now it will be said that it is not God, but the idea of God, thatacts in us. To which we shall reply that it is sometimes God acting byHis idea, but still very often it is rather God acting in us by Himself. And the retort will be a demand for proofs of the objective truth of theexistence of God, since we ask for signs. And we shall have to answerwith Pilate: What is truth?

And having asked this question, Pilate turned away without waiting foran answer and proceeded to wash his hands in order that he mightexculpate himself for having allowed Christ to be condemned to death. And there are many who ask this question, What is truth? but without anyintention of waiting for the answer, and solely in order that they mayturn away and wash their hands of the crime of having helped to kill andeject God from their own consciousness or from the consciousness ofothers. 

What is truth? There are two kinds of truth--the logical or objective, the opposite of which is error, and the moral or subjective, theopposite of which is falsehood. And in a previous essay I haveendeavoured to show that error is the fruit of falsehood. [46]

Moral truth, the road that leads to intellectual truth, which also ismoral, inculcates the study of science, which is over and above all aschool of sincerity and humility. Science teaches us, in effect, tosubmit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as theyare--that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we wouldhave them be. In a religiously scientific investigation, it is the dataof reality themselves, it is the perceptions which we receive from theoutside world, that formulate themselves in our mind as laws--it is notwe ourselves who thus formulate them. It is the numbers themselves whichin our mind create mathematics. Science is the most intimate school ofresignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seeminglymost insignificant of facts. And it is the gateway of religion; butwithin the temple itself its function ceases. 

And just as there is logical truth, opposed to error, and moral truth, opposed to falsehood, so there is also esthetic truth or verisimilitude, which is opposed to extravagance, and religious truth or hope, which isopposed to the inquietude of absolute despair. For estheticverisimilitude, the expression of which is sensible, differs fromlogical truth, the demonstration of which is rational; and religioustruth, the truth of faith, the substance of things hoped for, is notequivalent to moral truth, but superimposes itself upon it. He whoaffirms a faith built upon a basis of uncertainty does not and cannotlie. 

And not only do we not believe with reason, nor yet above reason norbelow reason, but we believe against reason. Religious faith, it must berepeated yet again, is not only irrational, it is contra-rational. Kierkegaard says: "Poetry is illusion before knowledge; religionillusion after knowledge. Between poetry and religion the worldly wisdomof living plays its comedy. Every individual who does not live eitherpoetically or religiously is a fool" (_Afsluttende uvidenskabeligEfterskrift_, chap. Iv. , sect. 2a, § 2). The same writer tells us thatChristianity is a desperate sortie (_salida_). Even so, but it is onlyby the very desperateness of this sortie that we can win through tohope, to that hope whose vitalizing illusion is of more force than allrational knowledge, and which assures us that there is always somethingthat cannot be reduced to reason. And of reason the same may be said aswas said of Christ: that he who is not with it is against it. That whichis not rational is contra-rational; and such is hope. 

By this circuitous route we always arrive at hope in the end. 

To the mystery of love, which is the mystery of suffering, belongs amysterious form, and this form is time. We join yesterday to to-morrowwith links of longing, and the now is, strictly, nothing but theendeavour of the before to make itself the after; the present is simplythe determination of the past to become the future. The now is a pointwhich, if not sharply articulated, vanishes; and, nevertheless, in thispoint is all eternity, the substance of time. 

Everything that has been can be only as it was, and everything that iscan be only as it is; the possible is always relegated to the future, the sole domain of liberty, wherein imagination, the creative andliberating energy, the incarnation of faith, has space to roam at large. 

Love ever looks and tends to the future, for its work is the work of ourperpetuation; the property of love is to hope, and only upon hopes doesit nourish itself. And thus when love sees the fruition of its desire itbecomes sad, for it then discovers that what it desired was not its trueend, and that God gave it this desire merely as a lure to spur it toaction; it discovers that its end is further on, and it sets out againupon its toilsome pilgrimage through life, revolving through a constantcycle of illusions and disillusions. And continually it transforms itsfrustrated hopes into memories, and from these memories it draws freshhopes. From the subterranean ore of memory we extract the jewelledvisions of our future; imagination shapes our remembrances into hopes. And humanity is like a young girl full of longings, hungering for lifeand thirsting for love, who weaves her days with dreams, and hopes, hopes ever, hopes without ceasing, for the eternal and predestinedlover, for him who, because he was destined for her from the beginning, from before the dawn of her remotest memory, from before hercradle-days, shall live with her and for her into the illimitablefuture, beyond the stretch of her furthest hopes, beyond the graveitself. And for this poor lovelorn humanity, as for the girl everawaiting her lover, there is no kinder wish than that when the winter oflife shall come it may find the sweet dreams of its spring changed intomemories sweeter still, and memories that shall burgeon into new hopes. In the days when our summer is over, what a flow of calm felicity, ofresignation to destiny, must come from remembering hopes which havenever been realized and which, because they have never been realized, preserve their pristine purity. 

Love hopes, hopes ever and never wearies of hoping; and love of God, ourfaith in God, is, above all, hope in Him. For God dies not, and he whohopes in God shall live for ever. And our fundamental hope, the root andstem of all our hopes, is the hope of eternal life. 

And if faith is the substance of hope, hope in its turn is the form offaith. Until it gives us hope, our faith is a formless faith, vague, chaotic, potential; it is but the possibility of believing, the longingto believe. But we must needs believe in something, and we believe inwhat we hope for, we believe in hope. We remember the past, we know thepresent, we only believe in the future. To believe what we have not seenis to believe what we shall see. Faith, then, I repeat once again, isfaith in hope; we believe what we hope for. 

Love makes us believe in God, in whom we hope and from whom we hope toreceive life to come; love makes us believe in that which the dream ofhope creates for us. 

Faith is our longing for the eternal, for God; and hope is God'slonging, the longing of the eternal, of the divine in us, which advancesto meet our faith and uplifts us. Man aspires to God by faith and criesto Him: "I believe--give me, Lord, wherein to believe!" And God, thedivinity in man, sends him hope in another life in order that he maybelieve in it. Hope is the reward of faith. Only he who believes trulyhopes; and only he who truly hopes believes. We only believe what wehope, and we only hope what we believe. 

It was hope that called God by the name of Father; and this name, socomforting yet so mysterious, is still bestowed upon Him by hope. Thefather gave us life and gives bread wherewith to sustain it, and we askthe father to preserve our life for us. And if Christ was he who, withthe fullest heart and purest mouth, named with the name of Father hisFather and ours, if the noblest feeling of Christianity is the feelingof the Fatherhood of God, it is because in Christ the human racesublimated its hunger for eternity. 

It may perhaps be said that this longing of faith, that this hope, ismore than anything else an esthetic feeling. Possibly the estheticfeeling enters into it, but without completely satisfying it. 

We seek in art an image of eternalization. If for a brief moment ourspirit finds peace and rest and assuagement in the contemplation of thebeautiful, even though it finds therein no real cure for its distress, it is because the beautiful is the revelation of the eternal, of thedivine in things, and beauty but the perpetuation of momentaneity. Justas truth is the goal of rational knowledge, so beauty is the goal ofhope, which is perhaps in its essence irrational. 

Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes away, for in some way or anothereverything is perpetuated; and everything, after passing through time, returns to eternity. The temporal world has its roots in eternity, andin eternity yesterday is united with to-day and to-morrow. The scenes oflife pass before us as in a cinematograph show, but on the further sideof time the film is one and indivisible. 

Physicists affirm that not a single particle of matter nor a singletremor of energy is lost, but that each is transformed and transmittedand persists. And can it be that any form, however fugitive it may be, is lost? We must needs believe--believe and hope!--that it is not, butthat somewhere it remains archived and perpetuated, and that there issome mirror of eternity in which, without losing themselves in oneanother, all the images that pass through time are received. Everyimpression that reaches me remains stored up in my brain even though itmay be so deep or so weak that it is buried in the depths of mysubconsciousness; but from these depths it animates my life; and if thewhole of my spirit, the total content of my soul, were to awake to fullconsciousness, all these dimly perceived and forgotten fugitiveimpressions would come to life again, including even those which I hadnever been aware of. I carry within me everything that has passed beforeme, and I perpetuate it with myself, and it may be that it all goes intomy germs, and that all my ancestors live undiminished in me and willcontinue so to live, united with me, in my descendants. And perhaps I, the whole I, with all this universe of mine, enter into each one of myactions, or, at all events, that which is essential in me enters intothem--that which makes me myself, my individual essence. 

And how is this individual essence in each several thing--that whichmakes it itself and not another--revealed to us save as beauty? What isthe beauty of anything but its eternal essence, that which unites itspast with its future, that element of it that rests and abides in thewomb of eternity? or, rather, what is it but the revelation of itsdivinity?

And this beauty, which is the root of eternity, is revealed to us bylove; it is the supreme revelation of the love of God and the token ofour ultimate victory over time. It is love that reveals to us theeternal in us and in our neighbours. 

Is it the beautiful, the eternal, in things, that awakens and kindlesour love for them, or is it our love for things that reveals to us thebeautiful, the eternal, in them? Is not beauty perhaps a creation oflove, in the same way and in the same sense that the sensible world is acreation of the instinct of preservation and the supersensible world ofthat of perpetuation? Is not beauty, and together with beauty eternity, a creation of love? "Though our outward man perish, " says the Apostle, "yet the inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Cor. Iv. 16). The man ofpassing appearances perishes and passes away with them; the man ofreality remains and grows. "For our light affliction, which is but for amoment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory"(ver. 17). Our suffering causes us anguish, and this anguish, burstingbecause of its own fullness, seems to us consolation. "While we look notat the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: forthe things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are notseen are eternal" (ver. 18). 

This suffering gives hope, which is the beautiful in life, the supremebeauty, or the supreme consolation. And since love is full of suffering, since love is compassion and pity, beauty springs from compassion and issimply the temporal consolation that compassion seeks. A tragicconsolation! And the supreme beauty is that of tragedy. Theconsciousness that everything passes away, that we ourselves pass away, and that everything that is ours and everything that environs us passesaway, fills us with anguish, and this anguish itself reveals to us theconsolation of that which does not pass away, of the eternal, of thebeautiful. 

And this beauty thus revealed, this perpetuation of momentaneity, onlyrealizes itself practically, only lives through the work of charity. Hope in action is charity, and beauty in action is goodness. 

 * * * * *

Charity, which eternalizes everything it loves, and in giving us thegoodness of it brings to light its hidden beauty, has its root in thelove of God, or, if you like, in charity towards God, in pity for God. Love, pity, personalizes everything, we have said; in discovering thesuffering in everything and in personalizing everything, it personalizesthe Universe itself as well--for the Universe also suffers--and itdiscovers God to us. For God is revealed to us because He suffers andbecause we suffer; because He suffers He demands our love, and becausewe suffer He gives us His love, and He covers our anguish with theeternal and infinite anguish. 

This was the scandal of Christianity among Jews and Greeks, amongPharisees and Stoics, and this, which was its scandal of old, thescandal of the Cross, is still its scandal to-day, and will continue tobe so, even among Christians themselves--the scandal of a God whobecomes man in order that He may suffer and die and rise again, becauseHe has suffered and died, the scandal of a God subject to suffering anddeath. And this truth that God suffers--a truth that appals the mind ofman--is the revelation of the very heart of the Universe and of itsmystery, the revelation that God revealed to us when He sent His Son inorder that he might redeem us by suffering and dying. It was therevelation of the divine in suffering, for only that which suffers isdivine. 

And men made a god of this Christ who suffered, and through him theydiscovered the eternal essence of a living, human God--that is, of a Godwho suffers--it is only the dead, the inhuman, that does not suffer--aGod who loves and thirsts for love, for pity, a God who is a person. Whosoever knows not the Son will never know the Father, and the Fatheris only known through the Son; whosoever knows not the Son of Man--hewho suffers bloody anguish and the pangs of a breaking heart, whose soulis heavy within him even unto death, who suffers the pain that kills andbrings to life again--will never know the Father, and can know nothingof the suffering God. 

He who does not suffer, and who does not suffer because he does notlive, is that logical and frozen _ens realissimum_, the _primum movens_, that impassive entity, which because of its impassivity is nothing but apure idea. The category does not suffer, but neither does it live orexist as a person. And how is the world to derive its origin and lifefrom an impassive idea? Such a world would be but the idea of the world. But the world suffers, and suffering is the sense of the flesh ofreality; it is the spirit's sense of its mass and substance; it is theself's sense of its own tangibility; it is immediate reality. 

Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for itis only suffering that makes us persons. And suffering is universal, suffering is that which unites all us living beings together; it is theuniversal or divine blood that flows through us all. That which we callwill, what is it but suffering?

And suffering has its degrees, according to the depth of itspenetration, from the suffering that floats upon the sea of appearancesto the eternal anguish, the source of the tragic sense of life, whichseeks a habitation in the depths of the eternal and there awakensconsolation; from the physical suffering that contorts our bodies to thereligious anguish that flings us upon the bosom of God, there to bewatered by the divine tears. 

Anguish is something far deeper, more intimate, and more spiritual thansuffering. We are wont to feel the touch of anguish even in the midst ofthat which we call happiness, and even because of this happiness itself, to which we cannot resign ourselves and before which we tremble. Thehappy who resign themselves to their apparent happiness, to a transitoryhappiness, seem to be as men without substance, or, at any rate, men whohave not discovered this substance in themselves, who have not touchedit. Such men are usually incapable of loving or of being loved, and theygo through life without really knowing either pain or bliss. 

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have tochoose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. And love leads usto no other happiness than that of love itself and its tragicconsolation of uncertain hope. The moment love becomes happy andsatisfied, it no longer desires and it is no longer love. Thesatisfied, the happy, do not love; they fall asleep in habit, nearneighbour to annihilation. To fall into a habit is to begin to cease tobe. Man is the more man--that is, the more divine--the greater hiscapacity for suffering, or, rather, for anguish. 

At our coming into the world it is given to us to choose between loveand happiness, and we wish--poor fools!--for both: the happiness ofloving and the love of happiness. But we ought to ask for the gift oflove and not of happiness, and to be preserved from dozing away intohabit, lest we should fall into a fast sleep, a sleep without waking, and so lose our consciousness beyond power of recovery. We ought to askGod to make us conscious of ourselves in ourselves, in our suffering. 

What is Fate, what is Fatality, but the brotherhood of love andsuffering? What is it but that terrible mystery in virtue of which lovedies as soon as it touches the happiness towards which it reaches out, and true happiness dies with it? Love and suffering mutually engenderone another, and love is charity and compassion, and the love that isnot charitable and compassionate is not love. Love, in a word, isresigned despair. 

That which the mathematicians call the problem of maxima and minima, which is also called the law of economy, is the formula for allexistential--that is, passional--activity. In material mechanics and insocial mechanics, in industry and in political economy, every problemresolves itself into an attempt to obtain the greatest possibleresulting utility with the least possible effort, the greatest incomewith the least expenditure, the most pleasure with the least pain. Andthe terrible and tragic formula of the inner, spiritual life is eitherto obtain the most happiness with the least love, or the most love withthe least happiness. And it is necessary to choose between the one andthe other, and to know that he who approaches the infinite of love, thelove that is infinite, approaches the zero of happiness, the supremeanguish. And in reaching this zero he is beyond the reach of the miserythat kills. "Be not, and thou shalt be mightier than aught that is, "said Brother Juan de los Angeles in one of his _Diálogos de la conquistadel reino de Dios_ (Dial. Iii. 8). 

And there is something still more anguishing than suffering. A man aboutto receive a much-dreaded blow expects to have to suffer so severelythat he may even succumb to the suffering, and when the blow falls hefeels scarcely any pain; but afterwards, when he has come to himself andis conscious of his insensibility, he is seized with terror, a tragicterror, the most terrible of all, and choking with anguish he cries out:"Can it be that I no longer exist?" Which would you find mostappalling--to feel such a pain as would deprive you of your senses onbeing pierced through with a white-hot iron, or to see yourself thuspierced through without feeling any pain? Have you never felt thehorrible terror of feeling yourself incapable of suffering and of tears?Suffering tells us that we exist; suffering tells us that those whom welove exist; suffering tells us that the world in which we live exists;and suffering tells us that God exists and suffers; but it is thesuffering of anguish, the anguish of surviving and being eternal. Anguish discovers God to us and makes us love Him. 

To believe in God is to love Him, and to love Him is to feel Himsuffering, to pity Him. 

It may perhaps appear blasphemous to say that God suffers, for sufferingimplies limitation. Nevertheless, God, the Consciousness of theUniverse, is limited by the brute matter in which He lives, by theunconscious, from which He seeks to liberate Himself and to liberate us. And we, in our turn, must seek to liberate Him. God suffers in each andall of us, in each and all of the consciousnesses imprisoned intransitory matter, and we all suffer in Him. Religious anguish is butthe divine suffering, the feeling that God suffers in me and that Isuffer in Him. 

The universal suffering is the anguish of all in seeking to be all elsebut without power to achieve it, the anguish of each in being he that heis, being at the same time all that he is not, and being so for ever. The essence of a being is not only its endeavour to persist for ever, asSpinoza taught us, but also its endeavour to universalize itself; it isthe hunger and thirst for eternity and infinity. Every created beingtends not only to preserve itself in itself, but to perpetuate itself, and, moreover, to invade all other beings, to be others without ceasingto be itself, to extend its limits to the infinite, but without breakingthem. It does not wish to throw down its walls and leave everything laidflat, common and undefended, confounding and losing its ownindividuality, but it wishes to carry its walls to the extreme limits ofcreation and to embrace everything within them. It seeks the maximum ofindividuality with the maximum also of personality; it aspires to theidentification of the Universe with itself; it aspires to God. 

And this vast I, within which each individual I seeks to put theUniverse--what is it but God? And because I aspire to God, I love Him;and this aspiration of mine towards God is my love for Him, and just asI suffer in being He, He also suffers in being I, and in being each oneof us. 

I am well aware that in spite of my warning that I am attempting here togive a logical form to a system of a-logical feelings, I shall bescandalizing not a few of my readers in speaking of a God who suffers, and in applying to God Himself, as God, the passion of Christ. The Godof so-called rational theology excludes in effect all suffering. And thereader will no doubt think that this idea of suffering can have only ametaphorical value when applied to God, similar to that which issupposed to attach to those passages in the Old Testament whichdescribe the human passions of the God of Israel. For anger, wrath, andvengeance are impossible without suffering. And as for saying that Godsuffers through being bound by matter, I shall be told that, in thewords of Plotinus (_Second Ennead_, ix. , 7), the Universal Soul cannotbe bound by the very thing--namely, bodies or matter--which is bound byIt. 

Herein is involved the whole problem of the origin of evil, the evil ofsin no less than the evil of pain, for if God does not suffer, He causessuffering; and if His life, since God lives, is not a process ofrealizing in Himself a total consciousness which is continually becomingfuller--that is to say, which is continually becoming more and moreGod--it is a process of drawing all things towards Himself, of impartingHimself to all, of constraining the consciousness of each part to enterinto the consciousness of the All, which is He Himself, until at last Hecomes to be all in all--_panta en paot_, according to the expression ofSt. Paul, the first Christian mystic. We will discuss this more fully, however, in the next chapter on the apocatastasis or beatific union. 

For the present let it suffice to say that there is a vast current ofsuffering urging living beings towards one another, constraining them tolove one another and to seek one another, and to endeavour to completeone another, and to be each himself and others at the same time. In Godeverything lives, and in His suffering everything suffers, and in lovingGod we love His creatures in Him, just as in loving and pitying Hiscreatures we love and pity God in them. No single soul can be free solong as there is anything enslaved in God's world, neither can GodHimself, who lives in the soul of each one of us, be free so long as oursoul is not free. 

My most immediate sensation is the sense and love of my own misery, myanguish, the compassion I feel for myself, the love I bear for myself. And when this compassion is vital and superabundant, it overflows fromme upon others, and from the excess of my own compassion I come to havecompassion for my neighbours. My own misery is so great that thecompassion for myself which it awakens within me soon overflows andreveals to me the universal misery. 

And what is charity but the overflow of pity? What is it but reflectedpity that overflows and pours itself out in a flood of pity for the woesof others and in the exercise of charity?

When the overplus of our pity leads us to the consciousness of Godwithin us, it fills us with so great anguish for the misery shed abroadin all things, that we have to pour our pity abroad, and this we do inthe form of charity. And in this pouring abroad of our pity weexperience relief and the painful sweetness of goodness. This is whatTeresa de Jesús, the mystical doctor, called "sweet-tasting suffering"(_dolor sabroso_), and she knew also the lore of suffering loves. It isas when one looks upon some thing of beauty and feels the necessity ofmaking others sharers in it. For the creative impulse, in which charityconsists, is the work of suffering love. 

We feel, in effect, a satisfaction in doing good when good superaboundswithin us, when we are swollen with pity; and we are swollen with pitywhen God, filling our soul, gives us the suffering sensation ofuniversal life, of the universal longing for eternal divinization. Forwe are not merely placed side by side with others in the world, havingno common root with them, neither is their lot indifferent to us, buttheir pain hurts us, their anguish fills us with anguish, and we feelour community of origin and of suffering even without knowing it. Suffering, and pity which is born of suffering, are what reveal to usthe brotherhood of every existing thing that possesses life and more orless of consciousness. "Brother Wolf" St. Francis of Assisi called thepoor wolf that feels a painful hunger for the sheep, and feels, too, perhaps, the pain of having to devour them; and this brotherhood revealsto us the Fatherhood of God, reveals to us that God is a Father and thatHe exists. And as a Father He shelters our common misery. 

Charity, then, is the impulse to liberate myself and all my fellows fromsuffering, and to liberate God, who embraces us all. 

Suffering is a spiritual thing. It is the most immediate revelation ofconsciousness, and it may be that our body was given us simply in orderthat suffering might be enabled to manifest itself. A man who had neverknown suffering, either in greater or less degree, would scarcelypossess consciousness of himself. The child first cries at birth whenthe air, entering into his lungs and limiting him, seems to say to him:You have to breathe me in order that you may live!

We must needs believe with faith, whatever counsels reason may give us, that the material or sensible world which the senses create for usexists solely in order to embody and sustain that other spiritual orimaginable world which the imagination creates for us. Consciousnesstends to be ever more and more consciousness, to intensify itsconsciousness, to acquire full consciousness of its complete self, ofthe whole of its content. We must needs believe with faith, whatevercounsels reason may give us, that in the depths of our own bodies, inanimals, in plants, in rocks, in everything that lives, in all theUniverse, there is a spirit that strives to know itself, to acquireconsciousness of itself, to be itself--for to be oneself is to knowoneself--to be pure spirit; and since it can only achieve this by meansof the body, by means of matter, it creates and makes use of matter atthe same time that it remains the prisoner of it. The face can only seeitself when portrayed in the mirror, but in order to see itself it mustremain the prisoner of the mirror in which it sees itself, and the imagewhich it sees therein is as the mirror distorts it; and if the mirrorbreaks, the image is broken; and if the mirror is blurred, the image isblurred. 

Spirit finds itself limited by the matter in which it has to live andacquire consciousness of itself, just as thought is limited by the wordin which as a social medium it is incarnated. Without matter there is nospirit, but matter makes spirit suffer by limiting it. And suffering issimply the obstacle which matter opposes to spirit; it is the clash ofthe conscious with the unconscious. 

Suffering is, in effect, the barrier which unconsciousness, matter, setsup against consciousness, spirit; it is the resistance to will, thelimit which the visible universe imposes upon God; it is the wall thatconsciousness runs up against when it seeks to extend itself at theexpense of unconsciousness; it is the resistance which unconsciousnessopposes to its penetration by consciousness. 

Although in deference to authority we may believe, we do not in factknow, that we possess heart, stomach, or lungs so long as they do notcause us discomfort, suffering, or anguish. Physical suffering, or evendiscomfort, is what reveals to us our own internal core. And the same istrue of spiritual suffering and anguish, for we do not take account ofthe fact that we possess a soul until it hurts us. 

Anguish is that which makes consciousness return upon itself. He whoknows no anguish knows what he does and what he thinks, but he does nottruly know that he does it and that he thinks it. He thinks, but he doesnot think that he thinks, and his thoughts are as if they were not his. Neither does he properly belong to himself. For it is only anguish, itis only the passionate longing never to die, that makes a human spiritmaster of itself. 

Pain, which is a kind of dissolution, makes us discover our internalcore; and in the supreme dissolution, which is death, we shall, at last, through the pain of annihilation, arrive at the core of our temporalcore--at God, whom in our spiritual anguish we breathe and learn tolove. 

Even so must we believe with faith, whatever counsels reason may giveus. 

The origin of evil, as many discovered of old, is nothing other thanwhat is called by another name the inertia of matter, and, as applied tothe things of the spirit, sloth. And not without truth has it been saidthat sloth is the mother of all vices, not forgetting that the supremesloth is that of not longing madly for immortality. 

Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger ofeternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God--these are neversatisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and to be all otherconsciousnesses without ceasing to be itself: it seeks to be God. Andmatter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing, its thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! andmatter answers: I wish not to be!

And in the order of human life, the individual would tend, under thesole instigation of the instinct of preservation, the creator of thematerial world, to destruction, to annihilation, if it were not forsociety, which, in implanting in him the instinct of perpetuation, thecreator of the spiritual world, lifts and impels him towards the All, towards immortalization. And everything that man does as a mereindividual, opposed to society, for the sake of his own preservation, and at the expense of society, if need be, is bad; and everything thathe does as a social person, for the sake of the society in which hehimself is included, for the sake of its perpetuation and of theperpetuation of himself in it, is good. And many of those who seem to bethe greatest egoists, trampling everything under their feet in theirzeal to bring their work to a successful issue, are in reality menwhose souls are aflame and overflowing with charity, for they subjectand subordinate their petty personal I to the social I that has amission to accomplish. 

He who would tie the working of love, of spiritualization, ofliberation, to transitory and individual forms, crucifies God in matter;he crucifies God who makes the ideal subservient to his own temporalinterests or worldly glory. And such a one is a deicide. 

The work of charity, of the love of God, is to endeavour to liberate Godfrom brute matter, to endeavour to give consciousness to everything, tospiritualize or universalize everything; it is to dream that the veryrocks may find a voice and work in accordance with the spirit of thisdream; it is to dream that everything that exists may become conscious, that the Word may become life. 

We have but to look at the eucharistic symbol to see an instance of it. The Word has been imprisoned in a piece of material bread, and it hasbeen imprisoned therein to the end that we may eat it, and in eating itmake it our own, part and parcel of our body in which the spirit dwells, and that it may beat in our heart and think in our brain and beconsciousness. It has been imprisoned in this bread in order that, afterbeing buried in our body, it may come to life again in our spirit. 

And we must spiritualize everything. And this we shall accomplish bygiving our spirit, which grows the more the more it is distributed, toall men and to all things. And we give our spirit when we invade otherspirits and make ourselves the master of them. 

All this is to be believed with faith, whatever counsels reason may giveus. 

 * * * * *

And now we are about to see what practical consequences all these moreor less fantastical doctrines may have in regard to logic, to esthetics, and, above all, to ethics--their religious concretion, in a word. Andperhaps then they will gain more justification in the eyes of thereader who, in spite of my warnings, has hitherto been looking for thescientific or even philosophic development of an irrational system. 

I think it may not be superfluous to recall to the reader once againwhat I said at the conclusion of the sixth chapter, that entitled "Inthe Depths of the Abyss"; but we now approach the practical orpragmatical part of this treatise. First, however, we must see how thereligious sense may become concrete in the hopeful vision of anotherlife. 

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Reinold Seeberg, _Christliche-protestantische Ethik_ in_Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_series. 

[45] _Cf. _ St. Thomas Aquinas, _Summa_, secunda secundæ, quæstio iv. , art. 2. 

[46] "_Qué es Verdad?_" ("What is truth?"), published in _La EspañaModerna_, March, 1906, vol. 207 (reprinted in the edition of collected_Ensayos_, vol. Vi. , Madrid, 1918). 

X

RELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND AND THE APOCATASTASIS

_Kai gar isôs kai malista prepei mellonta echeise apodêmein diaskopein tekai muthologein peri tês apodêmias tês echei, poian tina autên oiomethaeinai. _--PLATO: _Phædo_. 

Religion is founded upon faith, hope, and charity, which in their turnare founded upon the feeling of divinity and of God. Of faith in God isborn our faith in men, of hope in God hope in men, and of charity orpiety towards God--for as Cicero said, [47] _est enim pietas iustitiaadversum deos_--charity towards men. In God is resumed not onlyHumanity, but the whole Universe, and the Universe spiritualized andpenetrated with consciousness, for as the Christian Faith teaches, Godshall at last be all in all. St. Teresa said, and Miguel de Molinosrepeated with a harsher and more despairing inflection, that the soulmust realize that nothing exists but itself and God. 

And this relation with God, this more or less intimate union with Him, is what we call religion. 

What is religion? In what does it differ from the religious sense andhow are the two related? Every man's definition of religion is basedupon his own inward experience of it rather than upon his observation ofit in others, nor indeed is it possible to define it without in some wayor another experiencing it. Tacitus said (_Hist. _ v. 4), speaking of theJews, that they regarded as profane everything that the Romans held tobe sacred, and that what was sacred to them was to the Romans impure:_profana illic omnia quæ apud nos sacra, rursum conversa apud illos quænobis incesta_. Therefore he, the Roman, describes the Jews as a peopledominated by superstition and hostile to religion, _gens superstitioniobnoxia, religionibus adversa_, while as regards Christianity, withwhich he was very imperfectly acquainted, scarcely distinguishing itfrom Judaism, he deemed it to be a pernicious superstition, _existialissuperstitio_, inspired by a hatred of mankind, _odium generis humani_(_Ab excessu Aug. _, xv. , 44). And there have been many others who haveshared his opinion. But where does religion end and superstition begin, or perhaps rather we should say at what point does superstition mergeinto religion? What is the criterion by means of which we discriminatebetween them?

It would be of little profit to recapitulate here, even summarily, theprincipal definitions, each bearing the impress of the personal feelingof its definer, which have been given of religion. Religion is betterdescribed than defined and better felt than described. But if there isany one definition that latterly has obtained acceptance, it is that ofSchleiermacher, to the effect that religion consists in the simplefeeling of a relationship of dependence upon something above us and adesire to establish relations with this mysterious power. Nor is theremuch amiss with the statement of W. Hermann[48] that the religiouslonging of man is a desire for truth concerning his human existence. Andto cut short these extraneous citations, I will end with one from thejudicious and perspicacious Cournot: "Religious manifestations are thenecessary consequence of man's predisposition to believe in theexistence of an invisible, supernatural and miraculous world, apredisposition which it has been possible to consider sometimes as areminiscence of an anterior state, sometimes as an intimation of afuture destiny" (_Traité de l'enchaînement des idées fondamentales dansles sciences et dans l'histoire_, § 396). And it is this problem ofhuman destiny, of eternal life, or of the human finality of the Universeor of God, that we have now reached. All the highways of religion leadup to this, for it is the very essence of all religion. 

Beginning with the savage's personalization of the whole Universe in hisfetich, religion has its roots in the vital necessity of giving humanfinality to the Universe, to God, and this necessity obliges it, therefore, to attribute to the Universe, to God, consciousness of selfand of purpose. And it may be said that religion is simply union withGod, each one interpreting God according to his own sense of Him. Godgives transcendent meaning and finality to life; but He gives itrelatively to each one of us who believe in Him. And thus God is for manas much as man is for God, for God in becoming man, in becoming human, has given Himself to man because of His love of him. 

And this religious longing for union with God is a longing for a unionthat cannot be consummated in science or in art, but only in life. "Hewho possesses science and art, has religion; he who possesses neitherscience nor art, let him get religion, " said Goethe in one of hisfrequent accesses of paganism. And yet in spite of what he said, hehimself, Goethe. . . ?

And to wish that we may be united with God is not to wish that we may belost and submerged in Him, for this loss and submersion of self ends atlast in the complete dissolution of self in the dreamless sleep ofNirvana; it is to wish to possess Him rather than to be possessed byHim. When his disciples, amazed at his saying that it was impossible fora rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, asked Jesus who thencould be saved, the Master replied that with men it was impossible butnot with God; and then said Peter, "Behold, we have forsaken all andfollowed thee; what shall we have therefore?" And the reply of Jesuswas, not that they should be absorbed in the Father, but that theyshould sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel(Matt. Xix. 23-26). 

It was a Spaniard, and very emphatically a Spaniard, Miguel de Molinos, who said in his _Guía Espiritual_[49] that "he who would attain to themystical science must abandon and be detached from five things: first, from creatures; second, from temporal things; third, from the very giftsof the Holy Spirit; fourth, from himself; and fifth, he must be detachedeven from God. " And he adds that "this last is the completest of all, because that soul only that knows how to be so detached is that whichattains to being lost in God, and only the soul that attains to being solost succeeds in finding itself. " Emphatically a true Spaniard, Molinos, and truly Spanish is this paradoxical expression of quietism or ratherof nihilism--for he himself elsewhere speaks of annihilation--and notless Spanish, nay, perhaps even more Spanish, were the Jesuits whoattacked him, upholding the prerogatives of the All against the claimsof Nothingness. For religion is not the longing for self-annihilation, but for self-completion, it is the longing not for death but for life. "The eternal religion of the inward essence of man . . . The individualdream of the heart, is the worship of his own being, the adoration oflife, " as the tortured soul of Flaubert was intimately aware (_Par leschamps et par les grèves_, vii. ). 

When at the beginning of the so-called modern age, at the Renaissance, the pagan sense of religion came to life again, it took concrete form inthe knightly ideal with its codes of love and honour. But it was apaganism Christianized, baptized. "Woman--_la donna_--was the divinityenshrined within those savage breasts. Whosoever will investigate thememorials of primitive times will find this ideal of woman in its fullforce and purity; the Universe is woman. And so it was in Germany, inFrance, in Provence, in Spain, in Italy, at the beginning of the modernage. History was cast in this mould; Trojans and Romans were conceivedas knights-errant, and so too were Arabs, Saracens, Turks, the Sultanand Saladin. . . . In this universal fraternity mingle angels, saints, miracles and paradise, strangely blended with the fantasy andvoluptuousness of the Oriental world, and all baptized in the name ofChivalry. " Thus, in his _Storia della Letteratura italiana_, ii. , writesFrancesco de Sanctis, and in an earlier passage he informs us that forthat breed of men "in paradise itself the lover's delight was to lookupon his lady--_Madonna_--and that he had no desire to go thither if hemight not go in his lady's company. " What, in fact, was Chivalry--whichCervantes, intending to kill it, afterwards purified and Christianizedin _Don Quixote_--but a real though distorted religion, a hybrid betweenpaganism and Christianity, whose gospel perhaps was the legend ofTristan and Iseult? And did not even the Christianity of themystics--those knights-errant of the spirit--possibly reach itsculminating-point in the worship of the divine woman, the Virgin Mary?What else was the Mariolatry of a St. Bonaventura, the troubadour ofMary? And this sentiment found its inspiration in love of the fountainof life, of that which saves us from death. 

But as the Renaissance advanced men turned from the religion of woman tothe religion of science; desire, the foundation of which was curiosity, ended in curiosity, in eagerness to taste of the fruit of the tree ofgood and evil. Europe flocked to the University of Bologna in search oflearning. Chivalry was succeeded by Platonism. Men sought to discoverthe mystery of the world and of life. But it was really in order to savelife, which they had also sought to save in the worship of woman. Humanconsciousness sought to penetrate the Universal Consciousness, but itsreal object, whether it was aware of it or not, was to save itself. 

For the truth is that we feel and imagine the UniversalConsciousness--and in this feeling and imagination religious experienceconsists--simply in order that thereby we may save our own individualconsciousnesses. And how?

Once again I must repeat that the longing for the immortality of thesoul, for the permanence, in some form or another, of our personal andindividual consciousness, is as much of the essence of religion as isthe longing that there may be a God. The one does not exist apart fromthe other, the reason being that fundamentally they are one and the samething. But as soon as we attempt to give a concrete and rational form tothis longing for immortality and permanence, to define it to ourselves, we encounter even more difficulties than we encountered in our attemptto rationalize God. 

The universal consent of mankind has again been invoked as a means ofjustifying this immortal longing for immortality to our own feeblereason. _Permanere animos arbitratur consensu nationum omnium_, saidCicero, echoing the opinion of the ancients (_Tuscul. Quæst. _, xvi. , 36). But this same recorder of his own feelings confessed that, althoughwhen he read the arguments in favour of the immortality of the soul inthe _Phædo_ of Plato he was compelled to assent to them, as soon as heput the book aside and began to revolve the problem in his own mind, allhis previous assent melted away, _assentio omnis illa illabitur_ (cap. Xi. , 25). And what happened to Cicero happens to us all, and it happenedlikewise to Swedenborg, the most daring visionary of the other world. Swedenborg admitted that he who discourses of life after death, puttingaside all erudite notions concerning the soul and its mode of union withthe body, believes that after death he shall live in a glorious joy andvision, as a man among angels; but when he begins to reflect upon thedoctrine of the union of the soul with the body, or upon thehypothetical opinion concerning the soul, doubts arise in him as towhether the soul is thus or otherwise, and when these doubts arise, hisformer idea is dissipated (_De cælo et inferno_, § 183). Nevertheless, as Cournot says, "it is the destiny that awaits me, _me_ or my _person_, that moves, perturbs and consoles me, that makes me capable ofabnegation and sacrifice, whatever be the origin, the nature or theessence of this inexplicable bond of union, in the absence of which thephilosophers are pleased to determine that my person must disappear"(_Traité_, etc. , § 297). 

Must we then embrace the pure and naked faith in an eternal life withouttrying to represent it to ourselves? This is impossible; it is beyondour power to bring ourselves or accustom ourselves to do so. Andnevertheless there are some who call themselves Christians and yet leavealmost altogether on one side this question of representation. Take anywork of theology informed by the most enlightened--that is, the mostrationalistic and liberal--Protestantism; take, for instance, the_Dogmatik_ of Dr. Julius Kaftan, and of the 668 pages of which the sixthedition, that of 1909, consists, you will find only one, the last, thatis devoted to this problem. And in this page, after affirming thatChrist is not only the beginning and middle but also the end andconsummation of History, and that those who are in Christ will attain tofullness of life, the eternal life of those who are in Christ, not asingle word as to what that life may be. Half a dozen words at mostabout eternal death, that is, hell, "for its existence is demanded bythe moral character of faith and of Christian hope. " Its moralcharacter, eh? not its religious character, for I am not aware that thelatter knows any such exigency. And all this inspired by a prudentagnostic parsimony. 

Yes, the prudent, the rational, and, some will say, the pious, attitude, is not to seek to penetrate into mysteries that are hiddenfrom our knowledge, not to insist upon shaping a plastic representationof eternal glory, such as that of the _Divina Commedia_. True faith, true Christian piety, we shall be told, consists in resting upon theconfidence that God, by the grace of Christ, will, in some way oranother, make us live in Him, in His Son; that, as our destiny is in Hisalmighty hands, we should surrender ourselves to Him, in the fullassurance that He will do with us what is best for the ultimate end oflife, of spirit and of the universe. Such is the teaching that hastraversed many centuries, and was notably prominent in the periodbetween Luther and Kant. 

And nevertheless men have not ceased endeavouring to imagine tothemselves what this eternal life may be, nor will they cease theirendeavours so long as they are men and not merely thinking machines. There are books of theology--or of what passes for theology--full ofdisquisitions upon the conditions under which the blessed dead live inparadise, upon their mode of enjoyment, upon the properties of theglorious body, for without some form of body the soul cannot beconceived. 

And to this same necessity, the real necessity of forming to ourselves aconcrete representation of what this other life may be, must in greatpart be referred the indestructible vitality of doctrines such as thoseof spiritualism, metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls from starto star, and the like; doctrines which as often as they are pronouncedto be defeated and dead, are found to have come to life again, clothedin some more or less new form. And it is merely supine to be content toignore them and not to seek to discover their permanent and livingessence. Man will never willingly abandon his attempt to form a concreterepresentation of the other life. 

But is an eternal and endless life after death indeed thinkable? Howcan we conceive the life of a disembodied spirit? How can we conceivesuch a spirit? How can we conceive a pure consciousness, without acorporal organism? Descartes divided the world into thought andextension, a dualism which was imposed upon him by the Christian dogmaof the immortality of the soul. But is extension, is matter, that whichthinks and is spiritualized, or is thought that which is extended andmaterialized? The weightiest questions of metaphysics arise practicallyout of our desire to arrive at an understanding of the possibility ofour immortality--from this fact they derive their value and cease to bemerely the idle discussions of fruitless curiosity. For the truth isthat metaphysics has no value save in so far as it attempts to explainin what way our vital longing can or cannot be realized. And thus it isthat there is and always will be a rational metaphysic and a vitalmetaphysic, in perennial conflict with one another, the one setting outfrom the notion of cause, the other from the notion of substance. 

And even if we were to succeed in imagining personal immortality, mightwe not possibly feel it to be something no less terrible than itsnegation? "Calypso was inconsolable at the departure of Ulysses; in hersorrow she was dismayed at being immortal, " said the gentle, themystical Fénelon at the beginning of his _Télémaque_. Was it not a kindof doom that the ancient gods, no less than the demons, were subjectto--the deprivation of the power to commit suicide?

When Jesus took Peter and James and John up into a high mountain and wastransfigured before them, his raiment shining as white as snow, andMoses and Elias appeared and talked with him, Peter said to the Master:"Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make threetabernacles; one for thee and one for Moses and one for Elias, " for hewished to eternalize that moment. And as they came down from themountain, Jesus charged them that they should tell no man what they hadseen until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead. And they, keeping this saying to themselves, questioned one with another what thisrising from the dead should mean, as men not understanding the purportof it. And it was after this that Jesus met the father whose son waspossessed with a dumb spirit and who cried out to him, "Lord, I believe;help thou mine unbelief" (Mark ix. ). 

Those three apostles did not understand what this rising from the deadmeant. Neither did those Sadducees who asked the Master whose wife sheshould be in the resurrection who in this life had had seven husbands(Matt. Xxii. ); and it was then that Jesus said that God is not the Godof the dead, but of the living. And the other life is not, in fact, thinkable to us except under the same forms as those of this earthly andtransitory life. Nor is the mystery at all clarified by that metaphor ofthe grain and the wheat that it bears, with which Paul answers thequestion, "How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?"(1 Cor. Xv. 35). 

How can a human soul live and enjoy God eternally without losing itsindividual personality--that is to say, without losing itself? What isit to enjoy God? What is eternity as opposed to time? Does the soulchange or does it not change in the other life? If it does not change, how does it live? And if it changes, how does it preserve itsindividuality through so vast a period of time? For though the otherlife may exclude space, it cannot exclude time, as Cournot observes inthe work quoted above. 

If there is life in heaven there is change. Swedenborg remarked that theangels change, because the delight of the celestial life would graduallylose its value if they always enjoyed it in its fullness, and becauseangels, like men, love themselves, and he who loves himself experienceschanges of state; and he adds further that at times the angels are sad, and that he, Swedenborg, discoursed with some when they were sad (_DeCælo et Inferno_, §§ 158, 160). In any case, it is impossible for us toconceive life without change, change of growth or of diminution, ofsadness or of joy, of love or of hate. 

In effect, an eternal life is unthinkable and an eternal life ofabsolute felicity, of beatific vision, is more unthinkable still. 

And what precisely is this beatific vision? We observe in the firstplace that it is called vision and not action, something passive beingtherefore presupposed. And does not this beatific vision suppose loss ofpersonal consciousness? A saint in heaven, says Bossuet, is a being whois scarcely sensible of himself, so completely is he possessed by Godand immerged in His glory. . . . Our attention cannot stay on the saint, because one finds him outside of himself, and subject by an unchangeablelove to the source of his being and his happiness (_Du culte qui est dûà Dieu_). And these are the words of Bossuet, the antiquietist. Thisloving vision of God supposes an absorption in Him. He who in a state ofblessedness enjoys God in His fullness must perforce neither think ofhimself, nor remember himself, nor have any consciousness of himself, but be in perpetual ecstasy (_ekstasis_) outside of himself, in acondition of alienation. And the ecstasy that the mystics describe is aprelude of this vision. 

He who sees God shall die, say the Scriptures (Judg. Xiii. 22); and mayit not be that the eternal vision of God is an eternal death, a swooningaway of the personality? But St. Teresa, in her description of the laststate of prayer, the rapture, transport, flight, or ecstasy of the soul, tells us that the soul is borne as upon a cloud or a mighty eagle, "butyou see yourself carried away and know not whither, " and it is "withdelight, " and "if you do not resist, the senses are not lost, at least Iwas so much myself as to be able to perceive that I was being lifted up"--that is to say, without losing consciousness. And God "appears to benot content with thus attracting the soul to Himself in so real a way, but wishes to have the body also, though it be mortal and of earth sofoul. " "Ofttimes the soul is absorbed--or, to speak more correctly, theLord absorbs it in Himself; and when He has held it thus for a moment, the will alone remains in union with Him"--not the intelligence alone. We see, therefore, that it is not so much vision as a union of the will, and meanwhile, "the understanding and memory are distraught . . . Like onewho has slept long and dreamed and is hardly yet awake. " It is "a softflight, a delicious flight, a noiseless flight. " And in this deliciousflight the consciousness of self is preserved, the awareness ofdistinction from God with whom one is united. And one is raised to thisrapture, according to the Spanish mystic, by the contemplation of theHumanity of Christ--that is to say, of something concrete and human; itis the vision of the living God, not of the idea of God. And in the 28thchapter she tells us that "though there were nothing else to delight thesight in heaven but the great beauty of the glorified bodies, that wouldbe an excessive bliss, particularly the vision of the Humanity of JesusChrist our Lord. . . . " "This vision, " she continues, "though imaginary, Idid never see with my bodily eyes, nor, indeed, any other, but only withthe eyes of the soul. " And thus it is that in heaven the soul does notsee God only, but everything in God, or rather it sees that everythingis God, for God embraces all things. And this idea is further emphasizedby Jacob Böhme. The saint tells us in the _Moradas Setimas_ (vii. 2)that "this secret union takes place in the innermost centre of the soul, where God Himself must dwell. " And she goes on to say that "the soul, Imean the spirit of the soul, is made one with God . . . "; and this unionmay be likened to "two wax candles, the tips of which touch each otherso closely that there is but one light; or again, the wick, the wax, and the light become one, but the one candle can again be separated fromthe other, and the two candles remain distinct; or the wick may bewithdrawn from the wax. " But there is another more intimate union, andthis is "like rain falling from heaven into a river or stream, becomingone and the same liquid, so that the river and the rain-water cannot bedivided; or it resembles a streamlet flowing into the sea, which cannotafterwards be disunited from it; or it may be likened to a room intowhich a bright light enters through two windows--though divided when itenters, the light becomes one and the same. " And what difference isthere between this and the internal and mystical silence of Miguel deMolinos, the third and most perfect degree of which is the silence ofthought? (_Guía Espiritual_, book i. , chap. Xvii. , § 128). Do we nothere very closely approach the view that "nothingness is the way toattain to that high state of a mind reformed"? (book iii. , chap. Xx. , §196). And what marvel is it that Amiel in his _Journal Intime_ shouldtwice have made use of the Spanish word _nada_, nothing, doubtlessbecause he found none more expressive in any other language? Andnevertheless, if we read our mystical doctor, St. Teresa, with care, weshall see that the sensitive element is never excluded, the element ofdelight--that is to say, the element of personal consciousness. The soulallows itself to be absorbed in God in order that it may absorb Him, inorder that it may acquire consciousness of its own divinity. 

A beatific vision, a loving contemplation in which the soul is absorbedin God and, as it were, lost in Him, appears either as an annihilationof self or as a prolonged tedium to our natural way of feeling. Andhence a certain feeling which we not infrequently observe and which hasmore than once expressed itself in satires, not altogether free fromirreverence or perhaps impiety, with reference to the heaven of eternalglory as a place of eternal boredom. And it is useless to despisefeelings such as these, so wholly natural and spontaneous. 

It is clear that those who feel thus have failed to take note of thefact that man's highest pleasure consists in acquiring and intensifyingconsciousness. Not the pleasure of knowing, exactly, but rather that oflearning. In knowing a thing we tend to forget it, to convert it, if theexpression may be allowed, into unconscious knowledge. Man's pleasure, his purest delight, is allied with the act of learning, of getting atthe truth of things, of acquiring knowledge with differentiation. Andhence the famous saying of Lessing which I have already quoted. There isa story told of an ancient Spaniard who accompanied Vasco Núñez deBalboa when he climbed that peak in Darien from which both the Atlanticand the Pacific are visible. On beholding the two oceans the old manfell on his knees and exclaimed, "I thank Thee, God, that Thou didst notlet me die without having seen so great a wonder. " But if this man hadstayed there, very soon the wonder would have ceased to be wonderful, and with the wonder the pleasure, too, would have vanished. His joy wasthe joy of discovery. And perhaps the joy of the beatific vision may benot exactly that of the contemplation of the supreme Truth, whole andentire (for this the soul could not endure), but rather that of acontinual discovery of the Truth, of a ceaseless act of learninginvolving an effort which keeps the sense of personal consciousnesscontinually active. 

It is difficult for us to conceive a beatific vision of mental quiet, offull knowledge and not of gradual apprehension, as in any way differentfrom a kind of Nirvana, a spiritual diffusion, a dissipation of energyin the essence of God, a return to unconsciousness induced by theabsence of shock, of difference--in a word, of activity. 

May it not be that the very condition which makes our eternal union withGod thinkable destroys our longing? What difference is there betweenbeing absorbed by God and absorbing Him in ourself? Is it the streamthat is lost in the sea or the sea that is lost in the stream? It is allthe same. 

Our fundamental feeling is our longing not to lose the sense of thecontinuity of our consciousness, not to break the concatenation of ourmemories, the feeling of our own personal concrete identity, even thoughwe may be gradually being absorbed in God, enriching Him. Who at eightyyears of age remembers the child that he was at eight, conscious thoughhe may be of the unbroken chain connecting the two? And it may be saidthat the problem for feeling resolves itself into the question as towhether there is a God, whether there is a human finality to theUniverse. But what is finality? For just as it is always possible to askthe why of every why, so it is also always possible to ask the whereforeof every wherefore. Supposing that there is a God, then wherefore God?For Himself, it will be said. And someone is sure to reply: What is thedifference between this consciousness and no-consciousness? But it willalways be true, as Plotinus has said (_Enn_. , ii. , ix. , 8), that to askwhy God made the world is the same as to ask why there is a soul. Orrather, not why, but wherefore (_dia ti_). 

For him who places himself outside himself, in an objective hypotheticalposition--which is as much as to say in an inhuman position--theultimate wherefore is as inaccessible--and strictly, as absurd--as theultimate why. What difference in effect does it make if there is not anyfinality? What logical contradiction is involved in the Universe notbeing destined to any finality, either human or superhuman? Whatobjection is there in reason to there being no other purpose in the sumof things save only to exist and happen as it does exist and happen? Forhim who places himself outside himself, none; but for him who lives andsuffers and desires within himself--for him it is a question of life ordeath. Seek, therefore, thyself! But in finding oneself, does not onefind one's own nothingness? "Having become a sinner in seeking himself, man has become wretched in finding himself, " said Bossuet (_Traité de laConcupiscence_, chap. Xi. ). "Seek thyself" begins with "Know thyself. "To which Carlyle answers (_Past and Present_, book iii. , chap. Xi. ):"The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. 'Knowthyself': long enough has that poor 'self' of thine tormented thee; thouwilt never get to 'know' it, I believe! Think it not thy business, thisof knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thoucanst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules. That will be thy betterplan. "

Yes, but what I work at, will not that too be lost in the end? And if itbe lost, wherefore should I work at it? Yes, yes, it may be that toaccomplish my work--and what is my work?--without thinking about myself, is to love God. And what is it to love God?

And on the other hand, in loving God in myself, am I not loving myselfmore than God, am I not loving myself in God?

What we really long for after death is to go on living this life, thissame mortal life, but without its ills, without its tedium, and withoutdeath. Seneca, the Spaniard, gave expression to this in his _Consolatioad Marciam_ (xxvi. ); what he desired was to live this life again: _istamoliri_. And what Job asked for (xix. 25-7) was to see God in the flesh, not in the spirit. And what but that is the meaning of that comicconception of _eternal recurrence_ which issued from the tragic soul ofpoor Nietzsche, hungering for concrete and temporal immortality?

And this beatific vision which is the primary Catholic solution of theproblem, how can it be realized, I ask again, without obliteration ofthe consciousness of self? Will it not be like a sleep in which wedream without knowing what we dream? Who would wish for an eternal lifelike that? To think without knowing that we think is not to be sensibleof ourselves, it is not to be ourselves. And is not eternal life perhapseternal consciousness, not only seeing God, but seeing that we see Him, seeing ourselves at the same time and ourselves as distinct from Him? Hewho sleeps lives, but he has no consciousness of himself; and wouldanyone wish for an eternal sleep? When Circe advised Ulysses to descendto the abode of the dead in order to consult the soothsayer Teiresias, she told him that Teiresias alone among the shades of the dead waspossessed of understanding, for all the others flitted about likeshadows (_Odyssey_, x. , 487-495). And can it be said that the others, apart from Teiresias, had really overcome death? Is it to overcome deathto flit about like shadows without understanding?

And on the other hand, may we not imagine that possibly this earthlylife of ours is to the other life what sleep is to waking? May not allour life be a dream and death an awakening? But an awakening to what?And supposing that everything is but the dream of God and that God oneday will awaken? Will He remember His dream?

Aristotle, the rationalist, tells in his _Ethics_ of the superiorhappiness of the contemplative life, _bios theôrêtikos_; and allrationalists are wont to place happiness in knowledge. And theconception of eternal happiness, of the enjoyment of God, as a beatificvision, as knowledge and comprehension of God, is a thing of rationalistorigin, it is the kind of happiness that corresponds with the God-Ideaof Aristotelianism. But the truth is that, in addition to vision, happiness demands delight, and this is a thing which has very little todo, with rationalism and is only attainable when we feel ourselvesdistinct from God. 

Our Aristotelian Catholic theologian, the author of the endeavour torationalize Catholic feeling, St. Thomas Aquinas, tells us in his_Summa_ (_prima secundæ partis, quæstio_ iv. , _art_. I) that "delight isrequisite for happiness. For delight is caused by the fact of desireresting in attained good. Hence, since happiness is nothing but theattainment of the Sovereign Good, there cannot be happiness withoutconcomitant delight. " But where is the delight of him who rests? Torest, _requiescere_--is not that to sleep and not to possess even theconsciousness that one is resting? "Delight is caused by the vision ofGod itself, " the theologian continues. But does the soul feel itselfdistinct from God? "The delight that accompanies the activity of theunderstanding does not impede, but rather strengthens that activity, " hesays later on. Obviously! for what happiness were it else? And in orderto save delectation, delight, pleasure, which, like pain, has alwayssomething material in it, and which we conceive of only as existing in asoul incarnate in a body, it was necessary to suppose that the soul in astate of blessedness is united with its body. Apart from some kind ofbody, how is delight possible? The immortality of the pure soul, withoutsome sort of body or spirit-covering, is not true immortality. And atbottom, what we long for is a prolongation of this life, this life andno other, this life of flesh and suffering, this life which we imprecateat times simply because it comes to an end. The majority of suicideswould not take their lives if they had the assurance that they wouldnever die on this earth. The self-slayer kills himself because he willnot wait for death. 

When in the thirty-third canto of the _Paradiso_, Dante relates how heattained to the vision of God, he tells us that just as a man whobeholds somewhat in his sleep retains on awakening nothing but theimpression of the feeling in his mind, so it was with him, for when thevision had all but passed away the sweetness that sprang from it stilldistilled itself in his heart. 

 _Cotal son to, che quasi tutta cessa mia visione ed ancor mi distilla nel cuor lo dulce che nacque da essa_

like snow that melts in the sun--

 _cosi la neve al sol si disigilla_. 

That is to say, that the vision, the intellectual content, passes, andthat which remains is the delight, the _passione impressa_, theemotional, the irrational--in a word, the corporeal. 

What we desire is not merely spiritual felicity, not merely vision, butdelight, bodily happiness. The other happiness, the rationalist_beatitude_, the happiness of being submerged in understanding, canonly--I will not say satisfy or deceive, for I do not believe that itever satisfied or deceived even a Spinoza. At the conclusion of his_Ethic_, in propositions xxxv. And xxxvi. Of the fifth part, Spinoza, affirms that God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual love; thatthe intellectual love of the mind towards God is the selfsame love withwhich God loves Himself, not in so far as He is infinite, but in so faras He can be manifested through the essence of the human mind, considered under the form of eternity--that is to say, that theintellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite lovewith which God loves Himself. And after these tragic, these desolatingpropositions, we are told in the last proposition of the whole book, that which closes and crowns this tremendous tragedy of the _Ethic_, that happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself, and thatour repression of our desires is not the cause of our enjoyment ofvirtue, but rather because we find enjoyment in virtue we are able torepress our desires. Intellectual love! intellectual love! what is thisintellectual love? Something of the nature of a red flavour, or a bittersound, or an aromatic colour, or rather something of the same sort as alove-stricken triangle or an enraged ellipse--a pure metaphor, but atragic metaphor. And a metaphor corresponding tragically with thatsaying that the heart also has its reasons. Reasons of the heart! lovesof the head! intellectual delight! delicious intellection!--tragedy, tragedy, tragedy!

And nevertheless there is something which may be called intellectuallove, and that is the love of understanding, that which Aristotle meantby the contemplative life, for there is something of action and of lovein the act of understanding, and the beatific vision is the vision ofthe total truth. Is there not perhaps at the root of every passionsomething of curiosity? Did not our first parents, according to theBiblical story, fall because of their eagerness to taste of the fruit ofthe tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to be as gods, knowersof this knowledge? The vision of God--that is to say, the vision of theUniverse itself, in its soul, in its inmost essence--would not thatappease all our longing? And this vision can fail to satisfy only men ofa gross mind who do not perceive that the greatest joy of man is to bemore man--that is, more God--and that man is more God the moreconsciousness he has. 

And this intellectual love, which is nothing but the so-called platoniclove, is a means to dominion and possession. There is, in fact, no moreperfect dominion than knowledge; he who knows something, possesses it. Knowledge unites the knower with the known. "I contemplate thee and incontemplating thee I make thee mine"--such is the formula. And to knowGod, what can that be but to possess Him? He who knows God is therebyhimself God. 

In _La Dégradation de l'énergie_ (iv^e partie, chap. Xviii. , 2) B. Brunhes relates a story concerning the great Catholic mathematicianCauchy, communicated to him by M. Sarrau, who had it from Père Gratry. While Cauchy and Père Gratry were walking in the gardens of theLuxumbourg, their conversation turned upon the happiness which those inheaven would have in knowing at last, without any obscurity orlimitation, the truths which they had so long and so laboriously soughtto investigate on earth. In allusion to the study which Cauchy had madeof the mechanistic theory of the reflection of light, Père Gratry threwout the suggestion that one on the greatest intellectual joys of thegreat geometrician in the future life would be to penetrate into thesecret of light. To which Cauchy replied that it did not appear to himto be possible to know more about this than he himself already knew, neither could he conceive how the most perfect intelligence could arriveat a clearer comprehension of the mystery of reflection than thatmanifested in his own explanation of it, seeing that he had furnished amechanistic theory of the phenomenon. "His piety, " Brunhes adds, "didnot extend to a belief that God Himself could have created anythingdifferent or anything better. "

From this narrative two points of interest emerge. The first is the ideaexpressed in it as to what contemplation, intellectual love, or beatificvision, may mean for men of a superior order of intelligence, men whoseruling passion is knowledge; and the second is the implicit faith shownin the mechanistic explanation of the world. 

This mechanistic tendency of the intellect coheres with the well-knownformula, "Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything istransformed"--a formula by means of which it has been sought tointerpret the ambiguous principle of the conservation of energy, forgetting that practically, for us, for men, energy is utilizableenergy, and that this is continually being lost, dissipated by thediffusion of heat, and degraded, its tendency being to arrive at adead-level and homogeneity. That which has value, and more than value, reality, for us, is the differential, which is the qualitative; pure, undifferentiated quantity is for us as if it did not exist, for it doesnot act. And the material Universe, the body of the Universe, wouldappear to be gradually proceeding--unaffected by the retarding action ofliving organisms or even by the conscious action of man--towards a stateof perfect stability, of homogeneity (_vide_ Brunhes, _op. Cit. _) For, while spirit tends towards concentration, material energy tends towardsdiffusion. 

And may not this have an intimate relation with our problem? May therenot be a connection between this conclusion of scientific philosophywith respect to a final state of stability and homogeneity and themystical dream of the apocatastasis? May not this death of the body ofthe Universe be the final triumph of its spirit, of God?

It is manifest that there is an intimate relation between the religiousneed of an eternal life after death and the conclusions--alwaysprovisional--at which scientific philosophy arrives with respect to theprobable future of the material or sensible Universe. And the fact isthat just as there are theologians of God and the immortality of thesoul, so there are also those whom Brunhes calls (_op. Cit. _, chap. Xxvi. , § 2) theologians of monism, and whom it would perhaps be betterto call atheologians, people who pertinaciously adhere to the spirit of_a priori_ affirmation; and this becomes intolerable, Brunhes adds, whenthey harbour the pretension of despising theology. A notable type ofthese gentlemen may be found in Haeckel, who has succeeded in solvingthe riddles of Nature!

These atheologians have seized upon the principle of the conservation ofenergy, the "Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything istransformed" formula, the theological origin of which is seen inDescartes, and have made use of it as a means whereby we are able todispense with God. "The world built to last, " Brunhes comments, "resisting all wear and tear, or rather automatically repairing therents that appear in it--what a splendid theme for oratoricalamplification! But these same amplifications which served in theseventeenth century to prove the wisdom of the Creator have been used inour days as arguments for those who presume to do without Him. " It isthe old story: so-called scientific philosophy, the origin andinspiration of which is fundamentally theological or religious, endingin an atheology or irreligion, which is itself nothing else but theologyand religion. Let us call to mind the comments of Ritschl upon thishead, already quoted in this work. 

To-day the last word of science, or rather of scientific philosophy, appears to be that, by virtue of the degradation of energy, of thepredominance of irreversible phenomena, the material, sensible world istravelling towards a condition of ultimate levelness, a kind of finalhomogeneity. And this brings to our mind the hypothesis, not only somuch used but abused by Spencer, of a primordial homogeneity, and hisfantastic theory of the instability of the homogeneous. An instabilitythat required the atheological agnosticism of Spencer in order toexplain the inexplicable transition from the homogeneous to theheterogeneous. For how, without any action from without, can anyheterogeneity emerge from perfect and absolute homogeneity? But as itwas necessary to get rid of every kind of creation, "the unemployedengineer turned metaphysician, " as Papini called him, invented thetheory of the instability of the homogeneous, which is more . . . Whatshall I say? more mystical, and even more mythological if you like, thanthe creative action of God. 

The Italian positivist, Roberto Ardigo, was nearer the mark when, objecting to Spencer's theory, he said that the most natural suppositionwas that things always were as they are now, that always there have beenworlds in process of formation, in the nebulous stage, worldscompletely formed and worlds in process of dissolution; thatheterogeneity, in short, is eternal. Another way, it will be seen, ofnot solving the riddle. 

Is this perhaps the solution? But in that case the Universe would beinfinite, and in reality we are unable to conceive a Universe that isboth eternal and limited such as that which served as the basis ofNietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. If the Universe must beeternal, if within it and as regards each of its component worlds, periods in which the movement is towards homogeneity, towards thedegradation of energy, must alternate with other periods in which themovement is towards heterogeneity, then it is necessary that theUniverse should be infinite, that there should be scope, always and ineach world, for some action coming from without. And, in fact, the bodyof God cannot be other than eternal and infinite. 

But as far as our own world is concerned, its graduallevelling-down--or, we might say, its death--appears to be proved. Andhow will this process affect the fate of our spirit? Will it wane withthe degradation of the energy of our world and return tounconsciousness, or will it rather grow according as the utilizableenergy diminishes and by virtue of the very efforts that it makes toretard this degradation and to dominate Nature?--for this it is thatconstitutes the life of the spirit. May it be that consciousness and itsextended support are two powers in contraposition, the one growing atthe expense of the other?

The fact is that the best of our scientific work, the best of ourindustry (that part of it I mean--and it is a large part--that does nottend to destruction), is directed towards retarding this fatal processof the degradation of energy. And organic life, the support of ourconsciousness, is itself an effort to avoid, so far as it is possible, this fatal period, to postpone it. 

It is useless to seek to deceive ourselves with pagan pæans in praiseof Nature, for as Leopardi, that Christian atheist, said with profoundtruth in his stupendous poem _La Ginestra_, Nature "gives us life like amother, but loves us like a step-mother. " The origin of humancompanionship was opposition to Nature; it was horror of impious Naturethat first linked men together in the bonds of society. It is humansociety, in effect, the source of reflective consciousness and of thecraving for immortality, that inaugurates the state of grace upon thestate of Nature; and it is man who, by humanizing and spiritualizingNature by his industry, supernaturalizes her. 

In two amazing sonnets which he called _Redemption_, the tragicPortuguese poet, Antero de Quental, embodied his dream of a spiritimprisoned, not in atoms or ions or crystals, but--as is natural in apoet--in the sea, in trees, in the forest, in the mountains, in thewind, in all material individualities and forms; and he imagines that aday may come when all these captive souls, as yet in the limbo ofexistence, will awaken to consciousness, and, emerging as pure thoughtfrom the forms that imprisoned them, they will see these forms, thecreatures of illusion, fall away and dissolve like a baseless vision. Itis a magnificent dream of the penetration of everything byconsciousness. 

May it not be that the Universe, our Universe--who knows if there areothers?--began with a zero of spirit--and zero is not the same asnothing--and an infinite of matter, and that its goal is to end with aninfinite of spirit and a zero of matter? Dreams!

May it be that everything has a soul and that this soul begs to befreed?

 _Oh tierras de Alvargonzález, en el corazón de España, tierras pobres, tierras tristes, tan tristes que tienen alma!_

sings our poet Antonio Machado in his _Campos de Castilla_. [50] Is thesadness of the field in the fields themselves or in us who look uponthem? Do they not suffer? But what can an individual soul in a world ofmatter actually be? Is it the rock or the mountain that is theindividual? Is it the tree?

And nevertheless the fact always remains that spirit and matter are atstrife. This is the thought that Espronceda expressed when he wrote:

 _Aquí, para vivir en santa calma, o sobra la materia, o sobra el alma. _[51]

And is there not in the history of thought, or of human imagination ifyou prefer it, something that corresponds to this process of thereduction of matter, in the sense of a reduction of everything toconsciousness?

Yes, there is, and its author is the first Christian mystic, St. Paul ofTarsus, the Apostle of the Gentiles, he who because he had never withhis bodily eyes looked upon the face of the fleshly and mortal Christ, the ethical Christ, created within himself an immortal and religiousChrist--he who was caught up into the third heaven and there beheldsecret and unspeakable things (2 Cor. Xii. ). And this first Christianmystic dreamed also of a final triumph of spirit, of consciousness, andthis is what in theology is technically called the apocatastasis orrestitution. 

In 1 Cor. Xv. 26-28 he tells us that "the last enemy that shall bedestroyed is death, for he hath put all things under his feet. But whenhe saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he isexcepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shallbe subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject untohim that put all things under him, that God may be all in all": _hina hêho theos panta en pasin_--that is to say, that the end is that God, Consciousness, will end by being all in all. 

This doctrine is completed by Paul's teaching, in his Epistle to theEphesians, with regard to the end of the whole history of the world. Inthis Epistle, as you know, he represents Christ--by whom "were allthings created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible andinvisible" (Col. I. 16)--as the head over all things (Eph. I. 22), andin him, in this head, we all shall be raised up that we may live in thecommunion of saints and that we "may be able to comprehend with allsaints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and toknow the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" (Eph. Iii. 18, 19). And this gathering of us together in Christ, who is the head and, as itwere, the compendium, of Humanity, is what the Apostle calls thegathering or collecting together or recapitulating of all things inChrist, _anakephalaiôsthai ta panta en Christô_. And thisrecapitulation--_anakephalaiôsis_, anacefaleosis--the end of the world'shistory and of the human race, is merely another aspect of theapocatastasis. The apocatastasis, God's coming to be all in all, thusresolves itself into the anacefaleosis, the gathering together of allthings in Christ, in Humanity--Humanity therefore being the end ofcreation. And does not this apocatastasis, this humanization ordivinization of all things, do away with matter? But if matter, which isthe principle of individuation, the scholastic _principiumindividuationis_, is once done away with, does not everything return topure consciousness, which, in its pure purity, neither knows itself noris it anything that can be conceived or felt? And if matter beabolished, what support is there left for spirit?

Thus a different train of thought leads us to the same difficulties, thesame unthinkabilities. 

It may be said, on the other hand, that the apocatastasis, God's comingto be all in all, presupposes that there was a time when He was not allin all. The supposition that all beings shall attain to the enjoyment ofGod implies the supposition that God shall attain to the enjoyment ofall beings, for the beatific vision is mutual, and God is perfected inbeing better known, and His being is nourished and enriched with souls. 

Following up the track of these wild dreams, we might imagine anunconscious God, slumbering in matter, and gradually wakening intoconsciousness of everything, consciousness of His own divinity; we mightimagine the whole Universe becoming conscious of itself as a whole andbecoming conscious of each of its constituent consciousnesses, becomingGod. But in that case, how did this unconscious God begin? Is He notmatter itself? God would thus be not the beginning but the end of theUniverse; but can that be the end which was not the beginning? Or can itbe that outside time, in eternity, there is a difference betweenbeginning and end? "The soul of all things cannot be bound by that verything--that is, matter--which it itself has bound, " says Plotinus(_Enn. _ ii. , ix. 7). Or is it not rather the Consciousness of the Wholethat strives to become the consciousness of each part and to make eachpartial consciousness conscious of itself--that is, of the totalconsciousness? Is not this universal soul a monotheist or solitary Godwho is in process of becoming a pantheist God? And if it is not so, ifmatter and pain are alien to God, wherefore, it will be asked, did Godcreate the world? For what purpose did He make matter and introducepain? Would it not have been better if He had not made anything? Whatadded glory does He gain by the creation of angels or of men whose fallHe must punish with eternal torment? Did He perhaps create evil for thesake of remedying it? Or was redemption His design, redemption completeand absolute, redemption of all things and of all men? For thishypothesis is neither more rational nor more pious than the other. 

In so far as we attempt to represent eternal happiness to ourselves, weare confronted by a series of questions to which there is nosatisfactory--that is, rational--answer, and it matters not whether thesupposition from which we start be monotheist, or pantheist, or evenpanentheist. 

Let us return to the Pauline apocatastasis. 

Is it not possible that in becoming all in all God completes Himself, becomes at last fully God, an infinite consciousness embracing allconsciousnesses? And what is an infinite consciousness? Sinceconsciousness supposes limitation, or rather since consciousness isconsciousness of limitation, of distinction, does it not thereby excludeinfinitude? What value has the notion of infinitude applied toconsciousness? What is a consciousness that is all consciousness, without anything outside it that is not consciousness? In such a case, of what is consciousness the consciousness? Of its content? Or may itnot rather be that, starting from chaos, from absolute unconsciousness, in the eternity of the past, we continually approach the apocatastasisor final apotheosis without ever reaching it?

May not this apocatastasis, this return of all things to God, be ratheran ideal term to which we unceasingly approach--some of us with fleeterstep than others--but which we are destined never to reach? May not theabsolute and perfect eternal happiness be an eternal hope, which woulddie if it were to be realized? Is it possible to be happy without hope?And there is no place for hope when once possession has been realized, for hope, desire, is killed by possession. May it not be, I say, thatall souls grow without ceasing, some in a greater measure than others, but all having to pass some time through the same degree of growth, whatever that degree may be, and yet without ever arriving at theinfinite, at God, to whom they continually approach? Is not eternalhappiness an eternal hope, with its eternal nucleus of sorrow in orderthat happiness shall not be swallowed up in nothingness?

Follow more questions to which there is no answer. "He shall be all inall, " says the Apostle. But will His mode of being in each one bedifferent or will it be the same for all alike? Will not God be whollyin one of the damned? Is He not in his soul? Is He not in what is calledhell? And in what sense is He in hell?

Whence arise new problems, those relating to the opposition betweenheaven and hell, between eternal happiness and eternal unhappiness. 

May it not be that in the end all shall be saved, including Cain andJudas and Satan himself, as Origen's development of the Paulineapocatastasis led him to hope?

When our Catholic theologians seek to justify rationally--or in otherwords, ethically--the dogma of the eternity of the pains of hell, theyput forward reasons so specious, ridiculous, and childish, that it wouldappear impossible that they should ever have obtained currency. For toassert that since God is infinite, an offence committed against Him isinfinite also and therefore demands an eternal punishment, is, apartfrom the inconceivability of an infinite offence, to be unaware that, inhuman ethics, if not in the human police system, the gravity of theoffence is measured not by the dignity of the injured person but by theintention of the injurer, and that to speak of an infinite culpableintention is sheer nonsense, and nothing else. In this connection thosewords which Christ addressed to His Father are capable of application:"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, " and no man whocommits an offence against God or his neighbour knows what he does. Inhuman ethics, or if you like in human police regulations--that which iscalled penal law and is anything but law[52] eternal punishment is ameaningless phrase. 

"God is just and punishes us; that is all we need to know; as far as weare concerned the rest is merely curiosity. " Such was the conclusion ofLamennais (_Essai_, etc. , iv^e partie, chap, vii. ), an opinion shared bymany others. Calvin also held the same view. But is there anyone who iscontent with this? Pure curiosity!--to call this load that wellnighcrushes our heart pure curiosity!

May we not say, perhaps, that the evil man is annihilated because hewished to be annihilated, or that he did not wish strongly enough toeternalize himself because he was evil? May we not say that it is notbelieving in the other life that makes a man good, but rather that beinggood makes him believe in it? And what is being good and being evil?These states pertain to the sphere of ethics, not of religion: or, rather, does not the doing good though being evil pertain to ethics, andthe being good though doing evil to religion?

Shall we not perhaps be told, on the other hand, that if the sinnersuffers an eternal punishment, it is because he does not cease tosin?--for the damned sin without ceasing. This, however, is no solutionof the problem, which derives all its absurdity from the fact thatpunishment has been conceived as vindictiveness or vengeance, not ascorrection, has been conceived after the fashion of barbarous peoples. And in the same way hell has been conceived as a sort of policeinstitution, necessary in order to put fear into the world. And theworst of it is that it no longer intimidates, and therefore will have tobe shut up. 

But, on the other hand, as a religious conception and veiled in mystery, why not--although the idea revolts our feelings--an eternity ofsuffering? why not a God who is nourished by our suffering? Is ourhappiness the end of the Universe? or may we possibly sustain with oursuffering some alien happiness? Let us read again in the _Eumenides_ ofthat terrible tragedian, Æschylus, those choruses of the Furies inwhich they curse the new gods for overturning the ancient laws andsnatching Orestes from their hands--impassioned invectives against theApollinian redemption. Does not redemption tear man, their captive andplaything, from the hands of the gods, who delight and amuse themselvesin his sufferings, like children, as the tragic poet says, torturingbeetles? And let us remember the cry, "My God, my God, why hast thouforsaken me?"

Yes, why not an eternity of suffering? Hell is an eternalization of thesoul, even though it be an eternity of pain. Is not pain essential tolife?

Men go on inventing theories to explain what they call the origin ofevil. And why not the origin of good? Why suppose that it is good thatis positive and original, and evil that is negative and derivatory?"Everything that is, in so far as it is, is good, " St. Augustineaffirmed. But why? What does "being good" mean? Good is good forsomething, conducive to an end, and to say that everything is good isequivalent to saying that everything is making for its end. But what isits end? Our desire is to eternalize ourselves, to persist, and we callgood everything that conspires to this end and bad everything that tendsto lessen or destroy our consciousness. We suppose that humanconsciousness is an end and not a means to something else which may notbe consciousness, whether human or superhuman. 

All metaphysical optimism, such as that of Leibnitz, and allmetaphysical pessimism, such as that of Schopenhauer, have no otherfoundation than this. For Leibnitz this world is the best because itconspires to perpetuate consciousness, and, together with consciousness, will, because intelligence increases will and perfects it, because theend of man is the contemplation of God; while for Schopenhauer thisworld is the worst of all possible worlds, because it conspires todestroy will, because intelligence, representation, nullifies the willthat begot it. 

And similarly Franklin, who believed in another life, asserted that hewas willing to live this life over again, the life that he had actuallylived, "from its beginning to the end"; while Leopardi, who did notbelieve in another life, asserted that nobody would consent to live hislife over again. These two views of life are not merely ethical, butreligious; and the feeling of moral good, in so far as it is ateleological value, is of religious origin also. 

And to return to our interrogations: Shall not all be saved, shall notall be made eternal, and eternal not in suffering but in happiness, those whom we call good and those whom we call bad alike?

And as regards this question of good and evil, does not the malice ofhim who judges enter in? Is the badness in the intention of him who doesthe deed or is it not rather in that of him who judges it to be bad? Butthe terrible thing is that man judges himself, creates himself his ownjudge. 

Who then shall be saved? And now the imagination puts forth anotherpossibility--neither more nor less rational than all those which havejust been put forward interrogatively--and that is that only those aresaved who have longed to be saved, that only those are eternalized whohave lived in an agony of hunger for eternity and for eternalization. Hewho desires never to die and believes that he shall never die in thespirit, desires it because he deserves it, or rather, only he desirespersonal immortality who carries his immortality within him. The man whodoes not long passionately, and with a passion that triumphs over allthe dictates of reason, for his own immortality, is the man who does notdeserve it, and because he does not deserve it he does not long for it. And it is no injustice not to give a man that which he does not know howto desire, for "ask, and it shall be given you. " It may be that to eachwill be given that which he desired. And perhaps the sin against theHoly Ghost--for which, according to the Evangelist, there is noremission--is none other than that of not desiring God, not longing tobe made eternal. 

 As is your sort of mind So is your sort of search; you'll find What you desire, and that's to be A Christian, said Robert Browning in _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_. 

In his _Inferno_ Dante condemned the Epicureans, those who did notbelieve in another life, to something more terrible than the not havingit, and that is the consciousness of not having it, and this heexpressed in plastic form by picturing them shut up in their tombs forall eternity, without light, without air, without fire, withoutmovement, without life (_Inferno_, x. , 10-15). 

What cruelty is there in denying to a man that which he did not or couldnot desire? In the sixth book of his _Æneid_ (426-429) the gentle Virgilmakes us hear the plaintive voices and sobbing of the babes who weepupon the threshold of Hades, _Continuo àuditæ voces, vagitus et ingens, Infantumque animæ flentes in limine primo, _

unhappy in that they had but entered upon life and never known thesweetness of it, and whom, torn from their mothers' breasts, a dark dayhad cut off and drowned in bitter death--

 _Quos dulcis vitæ exsortes et at ubere raptos Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo. _

But what life did they lose, if they neither knew life nor longed forit? And yet is it true that they never longed for it?

It may be said that others craved life on their behalf, that theirparents longed for them to be eternal to the end that they might begladdened by them in paradise. And so a fresh field is opened up for theimagination--namely, the consideration of the solidarity andrepresentivity of eternal salvation. 

There are many, indeed, who imagine the human race as one being, acollective and solidary individual, in whom each member may represent ormay come to represent the total collectivity; and they imagine salvationas something collective. As something collective also, merit, and assomething collective sin, and redemption. According to this mode offeeling and imagining, either all are saved or none is saved; redemptionis total and it is mutual; each man is his neighbour's Christ. 

And is there not perhaps a hint of this in the popular Catholic beliefwith regard to souls in purgatory, the belief that the living may devotesuffrages and apply merits to the souls of their dead? This sense of thetransmission of merits, both to the living and the dead, is general inpopular Catholic piety. 

Nor should it be forgotten that in the history of man's religiousthought there has often presented itself the idea of an immortalityrestricted to a certain number of the elect, spirits representative ofthe rest and in a certain sense including them; an idea of paganderivation--for such were the heroes and demi-gods--which sometimesshelters itself behind the pronouncement that there are many that arecalled and few that are chosen. 

Recently, while I was engaged upon this essay, there came into my handsthe third edition of the _Dialogue sur la vie et sur la mort_, byCharles Bonnefon, a book in which imaginative conceptions similar tothose that I have been setting forth find succinct and suggestiveexpression. The soul cannot live without the body, Bonnefon says, northe body without the soul, and thus neither birth nor death has any realexistence--strictly speaking, there is no body, no soul, no birth, nodeath, all of which are abstractions and appearances, but only athinking life, of which we form part and which can neither be born nordie. Hence he is led to deny human individuality and to assert that noone can say "I am" but only "we are, " or, more correctly, "there is inus. " It is humanity, the species, that thinks and loves in us. And soulsare transmitted in the same way that bodies are transmitted. "The livingthought or the thinking life which we are will find itself againimmediately in a form analogous to that which was our origin andcorresponding with our being in the womb of a pregnant woman. " Each ofus, therefore, has lived before and will live again, although he doesnot know it. "If humanity is gradually raised above itself, when thelast man dies, the man who will contain all the rest of mankind inhimself, who shall say that he may not have arrived at that higher orderof humanity such as exists elsewhere, in heaven?. . . As we are all boundtogether in solidarity, we shall all, little by little, gather thefruits of our travail. " According to this mode of imagining andthinking, since nobody is born, nobody dies, no single soul has finishedits struggle but many times has been plunged into the midst of the humanstruggle "ever since the type of embryo corresponding with the sameconsciousness was represented in the succession of human phenomena. " Itis obvious that since Bonnefon begins by denying personal individuality, he leaves out of account our real longing, which is to save ourindividuality; but on the other hand, since he, Bonnefon, is a personalindividual and feels this longing, he has recourse to the distinctionbetween the called and the chosen, and to the idea of representativespirits, and he concedes to a certain number of men this representativeindividual immortality. Of these elect he says that "they will besomewhat more necessary to God than we ourselves. " And he closes thissplendid dream by supposing that "it is not impossible that we shallarrive by a series of ascensions at the supreme happiness, and that ourlife shall be merged in the perfect Life as a drop of water in the sea. Then we shall understand, " he continues, "that everything wasnecessary, that every philosophy and every religion had its hour oftruth, and that in all our wanderings and errors and in the darkestmoments of our history we discerned the light of the distant beacon, andthat we were all predestined to participate in the Eternal Light. And ifthe God whom we shall find again possesses a body--and we cannotconceive a living God without a body--we, together with each of themyriads of races that the myriads of suns have brought forth, shall bethe conscious cells of his body. If this dream should be fulfilled, anocean of love would beat upon our shores and the end of every life wouldbe to add a drop of water to this ocean's infinity. " And what is thiscosmic dream of Bonnefon's but the plastic representation of the Paulineapocatastasis?

Yes, this dream, which has its origin far back in the dawn ofChristianity, is fundamentally the same as the Pauline anacefaleosis, the fusion of all men in Man, in the whole of Humanity embodied in aPerson, who is Christ, and the fusion not only of all men but of allthings, and the subsequent subjection of all things to God, in orderthat God, Consciousness, may be all in all. And this supposes acollective redemption and a society beyond the grave. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century, two pietists of Protestantorigin, Johann Jakob Moser and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, gave a newforce and value to the Pauline anacefaleosis. Moser "declared that hisreligion consisted not in holding certain doctrines to be true and inliving a virtuous life conformably therewith, but in being reunited toGod through Christ. But this demands the thorough knowledge--a knowledgethat goes on increasing until the end of life--of one's own sins andalso of the mercy and patience of God, the transformation of all naturalfeelings, the appropriation of the atonement wrought by the death ofChrist, the enjoyment of peace with God in the permanent witness of theHoly Spirit to the remission of sins, the ordering of life according tothe pattern of Christ, which is the fruit of faith alone, the drawingnear to God and the intercourse of the soul with Him, the disposition todie in grace and the joyful expectation of the Judgement which willbestow blessedness in the more intimate enjoyment of God and in the_commerce with all the saints_" (Ritschl, _Geschichte des Pietismus_, vol. Iii. , § 43). The commerce with all the saints--that is to say, theeternal human society. And for his part, Oetinger considers eternalhappiness not as the contemplation of God in His infinitude, but, takingthe Epistle to the Ephesians as his authority, as the contemplation ofGod in the harmony of the creature with Christ. The commerce with allthe saints was, according to him, essential to the content of eternalhappiness. It was the realization of the kingdom of God, which thuscomes to be the kingdom of Man. And in his exposition of these doctrinesof the two pietists, Ritschl confesses _(op. Cit. _, iii. , § 46) thatboth witnesses have with these doctrines contributed something toProtestantism that is of like value with the theological method ofSpener, another pietist. 

We see, therefore, that the Christian, mystical, inward longing eversince St. Paul, has been to give human finality, or divine finality, tothe Universe, to save human consciousness, and to save it by convertingall humanity into a person. This longing is expressed in theanacefaleosis, the gathering together of all things, all things in earthand in heaven, the visible and the invisible, in Christ, and also in theapocatastasis, the return of all things to God, to consciousness, inorder that God may be all in all. And does not God's being all in allmean that all things shall acquire consciousness and that in thisconsciousness everything that has happened will come to life again, andthat everything that has existed in time will be eternalized? And withinthe all, all individual consciousnesses, those which have been, thosethat are, and those that will be, and as they have been, as they are, and as they will be, will exist in a condition of society andsolidarity. 

But does not this awakening to consciousness of everything that hasbeen, necessarily involve a fusion of the identical, an amalgamation oflike things? In this conversion of the human race into a true society inChrist, a communion of saints, a kingdom of heaven, will not individualdifferences, tainted as they are with deceit and even with sin, beobliterated, and in the perfect society will that alone remain of eachman which was the essential part of him? Would it not perhaps result, according to Bonnefon's supposition, that this consciousness that livedin the twentieth century in this corner of this earth would feel itselfto be the same with other such consciousnesses as have lived in othercenturies and perhaps in other worlds?

And how can we conceive of an effective and real union, a substantialand intimate union, soul with soul, of all those who have been?

 If any two creatures grew into one They would do more than the world has done, said Browning in _The Flight of the Duchess_; and Christ has told usthat where two or three are gathered together in His name, there is Hein the midst of them. 

Heaven, then, so it is believed by many, is society, a more perfectsociety than that of this world; it is human society fused into aperson. And there are not wanting some who believe that the tendency ofall human progress is the conversion of our species into one collectivebeing with real consciousness--is not perhaps an individual humanorganism a kind of confederation of cells?--and that when it shall haveacquired full consciousness, all those who have existed will come tolife again in it. 

Heaven, so many think, is society. Just as no one can live in isolation, so no one can survive in isolation. No one can enjoy God in heaven whosees his brother suffering in hell, for the sin and the merit werecommon to both. We think with the thoughts of others and we feel withthe feelings of others. To see God when God shall be all in all is tosee all things in God and to live in God with all things. 

This splendid dream of the final solidarity of mankind is the Paulineanacefaleosis and apocatastasis. We Christians, said the Apostle (I Cor. Xii. 27) are the body of Christ, members of Him, flesh of His flesh andbone of His bone (Eph. V. 30), branches of the vine. 

But in this final solidarization, in this true and supreme_Christination_ of all creatures, what becomes of each individualconsciousness? what becomes of Me, of this poor fragile I, this I thatis the slave of time and space, this I which reason tells me is a merepassing accident, but for the saving of which I live and suffer and hopeand believe? Granting that the human finality of the Universe is saved, that consciousness is saved, would I resign myself to make the sacrificeof this poor I, by which and by which alone I know this finality andthis consciousness?

And here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summitof the tragedy, the very heart of it--the sacrifice of our ownindividual consciousness upon the altar of the perfected HumanConsciousness, of the Divine Consciousness. 

But is there really a tragedy? If we could attain to a clear vision ofthis anacefaleosis, if we could succeed in understanding and feelingthat we were going to enrich Christ, should we hesitate for a moment insurrendering ourselves utterly to Him? Would the stream that flows intothe sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of thesalt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish toreturn to the cloud which drew its life from the sea? is not its joy tofeel itself absorbed?

And yet. . . . 

Yes, in spite of everything, this is the climax of the tragedy. 

And the soul, my soul at least, longs for something else, notabsorption, not quietude, not peace, not appeasement, it longs ever toapproach and never to arrive, it longs for a never-ending longing, foran eternal hope which is eternally renewed but never wholly fulfilled. And together with all this, it longs for an eternal lack of somethingand an eternal suffering. A suffering, a pain, thanks to which it growswithout ceasing in consciousness and in longing. Do not write upon thegate of heaven that sentence which Dante placed over the threshold ofhell, _Lasciate ogni speranza!_ Do not destroy time! Our life is a hopewhich is continually converting itself into memory and memory in itsturn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like aneternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus doideas exist, but not thus do men live. Thus do ideas exist in theGod-Idea, but not thus can men live in the living God, in the God-Man. 

An eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternalascent. If there is an end of all suffering, however pure andspiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end of all desire, what is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If inparadise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him?And if even there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God littleby little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining toHim, there does not always remain something more for them to know anddesire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shallthey not fall asleep?

Or, to sum up, if in heaven there does not remain something of thisinnermost tragedy of the soul, what sort of a life is that? Is thereperhaps any greater joy than that of remembering misery--and to rememberit is to feel it--in time of felicity? Does not the prison haunt thefreed prisoner? Does he not miss his former dreams of liberty?

 * * * * *

Mythological dreams! it will be said. And I have not pretended that theyare anything else. But has not the mythological dream its content oftruth? Are not dream and myth perhaps revelations of an inexpressibletruth, of an irrational truth, of a truth that cannot be proven?

Mythology! Perhaps; but, as in the days of Plato, we must needsmythologize when we come to deal with the other life. But we have justseen that whenever we seek to give a form that is concrete, conceivable, or in other words, rational, to our primary, primordial, and fundamentallonging for an eternal life conscious of itself and of its personalindividuality, esthetic, logical, and ethical absurdities are multipliedand there is no way of conceiving the beatific vision and theapocatastasis that is free from contradictions and inconsistencies. 

And nevertheless!. . . 

Nevertheless, yes, we must needs long for it, however absurd it mayappear to us; nay, more, we must needs believe in it, in some way oranother, in order that we may live. In order that we may live, eh? notin order that we may understand the Universe. We must needs believe init, and to believe in it is to be religious. Christianity, the onlyreligion which we Europeans of the twentieth century are really capableof feeling, is, as Kierkegaard said, a desperate sortie (_Afsluttendeuvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, ii. , i. , cap. I. ), a sortie which can besuccessful only by means of the martyrdom of faith, which is, accordingto this same tragic thinker, the crucifixion of reason. 

Not without reason did he who had the right to do so speak of thefoolishness of the cross. Foolishness, without doubt, foolishness. Andthe American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was not altogether wide ofthe mark in making one of the characters in his ingenious conversationssay that he thought better of those who were confined in a lunaticasylum on account of religious mania than of those who, while professingthe same religious principles, kept their wits and appeared to enjoylife very well outside of the asylums. [53] But those who are at large, are they not really, thanks to God, mad too? Are there not mildmadnesses, which not only permit us to mix with our neighbours withoutdanger to society, but which rather enable us to do so, for by means ofthem we are able to attribute a meaning and finality to life and societythemselves?

And after all, what is madness and how can we distinguish it fromreason, unless we place ourselves outside both the one and the other, which for us is impossible?

Madness perhaps it is, and great madness, to seek to penetrate into themystery of the Beyond; madness to seek to superimpose theself-contradictory dreams of our imagination upon the dictates of a sanereason. And a sane reason tells us that nothing can be built up withoutfoundations, and that it is not merely an idle but a subversive task tofill the void of the unknown with fantasies. And nevertheless. . . . 

We must needs believe in the other life, in the eternal life beyond thegrave, and in an individual and personal life, in a life in which eachone of us may feel his consciousness and fed that it is united, withoutbeing confounded, with all other consciousnesses in the SupremeConsciousness, in God; we must needs believe in that other life in orderthat we may live this life, and endure it, and give it meaning andfinality. And we must needs believe in that other life, perhaps, inorder that we may deserve it, in order that we may obtain it, for it maybe that he neither deserves it nor will obtain it who does notpassionately desire it above reason and, if need be, against reason. 

And above all, we must feel and act as if an endless continuation ofour earthly life awaited us after death; and if it be that nothingnessis the fate that awaits us we must not, in the words of _Obermann_, soact that it shall be a just fate. 

And this leads us directly to the examination of the practical orethical aspect of our sole problem. 

FOOTNOTES:

[47] _De natura deorum_, lib. I. , cap. 41. 

[48] _Op. Cit. _

[49] _Guía Espiritual que desembaraza al alma y la conduce por elinterior camino para alcanzar la perfecta contemplación y el rico tesorode la paz interior_, book iii. , chap. Xviii. , § 185. 

[50]

 O land of Alvargonzález, In the heart of Spain, Sad land, poor land, So sad that it has a soul!

[51]

 To living a life of blessed quiet here on earth, Either matter or soul is a hindrance. 

[52] Eso que llaman derecho penal, y que es todo menos derecho. 

[53] _The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table. _

XI

THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM

 L'homme est périssable. II se peut; mais périssons en résistant, et, si le néant nous est reservé, ne faisons pas que ce soit une justice. --SÉNANCOUR: _Obermann_, lettre xc. 

Several times in the devious course of these essays I have defined, inspite of my horror of definitions, my own position with regard to theproblem that I have been examining; but I know there will always be somedissatisfied reader, educated in some dogmatism or other, who will say:"This man comes to no conclusion, he vacillates--now he seems to affirmone thing and then its contrary--he is full of contradictions--I can'tlabel him. What is he?" Just this--one who affirms contraries, a man ofcontradiction and strife, as Jeremiah said of himself; one who says onething with his heart and the contrary with his head, and for whom thisconflict is the very stuff of life. And that is as clear as the waterthat flows from the melted snow upon the mountain tops. 

I shall be told that this is an untenable position, that a foundationmust be laid upon which to build our action and our works, that it isimpossible to live by contradictions, that unity and clarity areessential conditions of life and thought, and that it is necessary tounify thought. And this leaves us as we were before. For it is preciselythis inner contradiction that unifies my life and gives it its practicalpurpose. 

Or rather it is the conflict itself, it is this self-same passionateuncertainty, that unifies my action and makes me live and work. 

We think in order that we may live, I have said; but perhaps it weremore correct to say that we think because we live, and the form of ourthought corresponds with that of our life. Once more I must repeat thatour ethical and philosophical doctrines in general are usually merelythe justification _a posteriori_ of our conduct, of our actions. Ourdoctrines are usually the means we seek in order to explain and justifyto others and to ourselves our own mode of action. And this, be itobserved, not merely for others, but for ourselves. The man who does notreally know why he acts as he does and not otherwise, feels thenecessity of explaining to himself the motive of his action and so heforges a motive. What we believe to be the motives of our conduct areusually but the pretexts for it. The very same reason which one man mayregard as a motive for taking care to prolong his life may be regardedby another man as a motive for shooting himself. 

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that reasons, ideas, have an influenceupon human actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a processanalogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is sobecause of the tendency in every idea to resolve itself into action--anidea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion thatsuggested to Fouillée his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideasare forces which we accommodate to other forces, deeper and much lessconscious. 

But putting all this aside for the present, what I wish to establish isthat uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of ourfinal destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stabledogmatic foundation, may be the basis of an ethic. 

He who bases or thinks that he bases his conduct--his inward or hisoutward conduct, his feeling or his action--upon a dogma or theoreticalprinciple which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming afanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened orshattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If, the earth that hethought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, forwe do not all come up to the standard of the ideal Stoic who remainsundaunted among the ruins of a world shattered into atoms. Happily thestuff that is underneath a man's ideas will save him. For if a manshould tell you that he does not defraud or cuckold his best friend onlybecause he is afraid of hell, you may depend upon it that neither wouldhe do so even if he were to cease to believe in hell, but that he wouldinvent some other excuse instead. And this is all to the honour of thehuman race. 

But he who believes that he is sailing, perhaps without a set course, onan unstable and sinkable raft, must not be dismayed if the raft givesway beneath his feet and threatens to sink. Such a one thinks that heacts, not because he deems his principle of action to be true, but inorder to make it true, in order to prove its truth, in order to createhis own spiritual world. 

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supremedesire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds ofthe ultimate and irremediable uncertainty, of the truth of what I hopefor, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue, therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is notfaith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is nosecurity or repose--so far as security and repose are obtainable in thislife, so essentially insecure and unreposeful--save in conduct that ispassionately good. 

Conduct, practice, is the proof of doctrine, theory. "If any man will doHis will--the will of Him that sent me, " said Jesus, "he shall know ofthe doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself" (Johnvii. 17); and there is a well-known saying of Pascal: "Begin by takingholy water and you will end by becoming a believer. " And pursuing asimilar train of thought, Johann Jakob Moser, the pietist, was of theopinion that no atheist or naturalist had the right to regard theChristian religion as void of truth so long as he had not put it to theproof by keeping its precepts and commandments (Ritschl, _Geschichte desPietismus_, book vii. , 43). 

What is our heart's truth, anti-rational though it be? The immortalityof the human soul, the truth of the persistence of our consciousnesswithout any termination whatsoever, the truth of the human finality ofthe Universe. And what is its moral proof? We may formulate it thus: Actso that in your own judgement and in the judgement of others you maymerit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so thatyou may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to dieto-morrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end ofmorality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; todiscover the finality that belongs to it--if indeed it has anyfinality--and to discover it by acting. 

More than a century ago, in 1804, in Letter XC of that series thatconstitutes the immense monody of his _Obermann_, Sénancour wrote thewords which I have put at the head of this chapter--and of all thespiritual descendants of the patriarchal Rousseau, Sénancour was themost profound and the most intense; of all the men of heart and feelingthat France has produced, not excluding Pascal, he was the most tragic. "Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if itis nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be ajust fate. " Change this sentence from its negative to the positiveform--"And if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that itshall be an unjust fate"--and you get the firmest basis of action forthe man who cannot or will not be a dogmatist. 

That which is irreligious and demoniacal, that which incapacitates usfor action and leaves us without any ideal defence against our eviltendencies, is the pessimism that Goethe puts into the mouth ofMephistopheles when he makes him say, "All that has achieved existencedeserves to be destroyed" (_denn alles was ensteht ist wert doss eszugrunde geht_). This is the pessimism which we men call evil, and notthat other pessimism that consists in lamenting what it fears to be trueand struggling against this fear--namely, that everything is doomed toannihilation in the end. Mephistopheles asserts that everything thatexists deserves to be destroyed, annihilated, but not that everythingwill be destroyed or annihilated; and we assert that everything thatexists deserves to be exalted and eternalized, even though no such fateis in store for it. The moral attitude is the reverse of this. 

Yes, everything deserves to be eternalized, absolutely everything, evenevil itself, for that which we call evil would lose its evilness inbeing eternalized, because it would lose its temporal nature. For theessence of evil consists in its temporal nature, in its not applyingitself to any ultimate and permanent end. 

And it might not be superfluous here to say something about thatdistinction, more overlaid with confusion than any other, between whatwe are accustomed to call optimism and pessimism, a confusion not lessthan that which exists with regard to the distinction betweenindividualism and socialism. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to form aclear idea as to what pessimism really is. 

I have just this very day read in the _Nation_ (July 6, 1912) anarticle, entitled "A Dramatic Inferno, " that deals with an Englishtranslation of the works of Strindberg, and it opens with the followingjudicious observations: "If there were in the world a sincere and totalpessimism, it would of necessity be silent. The despair which finds avoice is a social mood, it is the cry of misery which brother utters tobrother when both are stumbling through a valley of shadows which ispeopled with--comrades. In its anguish it bears witness to somethingthat is good in life, for it presupposes sympathy . . . The real gloom, the sincere despair, is dumb and blind; it writes no books, and feels noimpulse to burden an intolerable universe with a monument more lastingthan brass. " Doubtless there is something of sophistry in thiscriticism, for the man who is really in pain weeps and even cries aloud, even if he is alone and there is nobody to hear him, simply as a meansof alleviating his pain, although this perhaps may be a result of socialhabits. But does not the lion, alone in the desert, roar if he has anaching tooth? But apart from this, it cannot be denied that there is asubstance of truth underlying these remarks. The pessimism that protestsand defends itself cannot be truly said to be pessimism. And, in truth, still less is it pessimism to hold that nothing ought to perish althoughall things may be doomed to annihilation, while on the other hand it ispessimism to affirm that all things ought to be annihilated even thoughnothing may perish. 

Pessimism, moreover, may possess different values. There is aeudemonistic or economic pessimism, that which denies happiness; thereis an ethical pessimism, that which denies the triumph of moral good;and there is a religious pessimism, that which despairs of the humanfinality of the Universe, of the eternal salvation of the individualsoul. 

All men deserve to be saved, but, as I have said in the previouschapter, he above all deserves immortality who desires it passionatelyand even in the face of reason. An English writer, H. G. Wells, who hastaken upon himself the rôle of the prophet (a thing not uncommon in hiscountry), tells us in _Anticipations_ that "active and capable men ofall forms of religious profession tend in practice to disregard thequestion of immortality altogether. " And this is because the religiousprofessions of these active and capable men to whom Wells refers areusually simply a lie, and their lives are a lie, too, if they seek tobase them upon religion. But it may be that at bottom there is not somuch truth in what Wells asserts as he and others imagine. These activeand capable men live in the midst of a society imbued with Christianprinciples, surrounded by institutions and social feelings that are theproduct of Christianity, and faith in the immortality of the soul existsdeep down in their own souls like a subterranean river, neither seen norheard, but watering the roots of their deeds and their motives. 

It must be admitted that there exists in truth no more solid foundationfor morality than the foundation of the Catholic ethic. The end of manis eternal happiness, which consists in the vision and enjoyment of God_in sæcula sæculorum_. Where it errs, however, is in the choice of themeans conducive to this end; for to make the attainment of eternalhappiness dependent upon believing or not believing in the Procession ofthe Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son and not from the Fatheralone, or in the Divinity of Jesus, or in the theory of the HypostaticUnion, or even in the existence of God, is, as a moment's reflectionwill show, nothing less than monstrous. A human God--and that is theonly kind of God we are able to conceive--would never reject him who wasunable to believe in Him with his head, and it is not in his head but inhis heart that the wicked man says that there is no God, which isequivalent to saying that he wishes that there may not be a God. If anybelief could be bound up with the attainment of eternal happiness itwould be the belief in this happiness itself and in the possibility ofit. 

And what shall we say of that other proposition of the king of pedants, to the effect that we have not come into the world to be happy but tofulfil our duty (_Wir sind nicht auf der Welt, um glücklich zu sein, sondern um unsere Schuldigkeit zu tun_)? If we are in the world _for_something (_um etwas_), whence can this _for_ be derived but from thevery essence of our own will, which asks for happiness and not duty asthe ultimate end? And if it is sought to attribute some other value tothis _for_, an objective value, as some Sadducean pedant would say, thenit must be recognized that the objective reality, that which wouldremain even though humanity should disappear, is as indifferent to ourduty as to our happiness, is as little concerned with our morality aswith our felicity. I am not aware that Jupiter, Uranus, or Sirius wouldallow their course to be affected by the fact that we are or are notfulfilling our duty any more than by the fact that we are or are nothappy. 

Such considerations must appear to these pedants to be characterized bya ridiculous vulgarity and a dilettante superficiality. (Theintellectual world is divided into two classes--dilettanti on the onehand, and pedants on the other. ) What choice, then, have we? The modernman is he who resigns himself to the truth and is content to be ignorantof the synthesis of culture--witness what Windelband says on this headin his study of the fate of Hölderlin (_Praeludien_, i. ). Yes, these menof culture are resigned, but there remain a few poor savages likeourselves for whom resignation is impossible. We do not resign ourselvesto the idea of having one day to disappear, and the criticism of thegreat Pedant does not console us. 

The quintessence of common sense was expressed by Galileo Galilei whenhe said: "Some perhaps will say that the bitterest pain is the loss oflife, but I say that there are others more bitter; for whosoever isdeprived of life is deprived at the same time of the power to lament, not only this, but any other loss whatsoever. " Whether Galileo wasconscious or not of the humour of this sentence I do not know, but it isa tragic humour. 

But, to turn back, I repeat that if the attainment of eternal happinesscould be bound up with any particular belief, it would be with thebelief in the possibility of its realization. And yet, strictlyspeaking, not even with this. The reasonable man says in his head, "There is no other life after this, " but only the wicked says it in hisheart. But since the wicked man is possibly only a man who has beendriven to despair, will a human God condemn him because of his despair?His despair alone is misfortune enough. 

But in any event let us adopt the Calderónian formula in _La Vida esSueño_:

 _Que estoy soñando y que quiero obrar hacer bien, pues no se pierde el hacer bien aun en sueños_[54]

But are good deeds really not lost? Did Calderón know? And he added:

 _Acudamos a lo eterno que es la fama vividora donde ni duermen las dichas no las grandezas reposan_[55]

Is it really so? Did Calderón know?

Calderón had faith, robust Catholic faith; but for him who lacks faith, for him who cannot believe in what Don Pedro Calderón de la Barcabelieved, there always remains the attitude of _Obermann_. 

If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; letus fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory; let usfight against it quixotically. 

And not only do we fight against destiny in longing for what isirrational, but in acting in such a way that we make ourselvesirreplaceable, in impressing our seal and mark upon others, in actingupon our neighbours in order to dominate them, in giving ourselves tothem in order that we may eternalize ourselves so far as we can. 

Our greatest endeavour must be to make ourselves irreplaceable; to makethe theoretical fact--if this expression does not involve acontradiction in terms--the fact that each one of us is unique andirreplaceable, that no one else can fill the gap that will be left whenwe die, a practical truth. 

For in fact each man is unique and irreplaceable; there cannot be anyother I; each one of us--our soul, that is, not our life--is worth thewhole Universe. I say the spirit and not the life, for the ridiculouslyexaggerated value which those attach to human life who, not reallybelieving in the spirit--that is to say, in their personalimmortality--tirade against war and the death penalty, for example, is avalue which they attach to it precisely because they do not reallybelieve in the spirit of which life is the servant. For life is of useonly in so far as it serves its lord and master, spirit, and if themaster perishes with the servant, neither the one nor the other is ofany great value. 

And to act in such a way as to make our annihilation an injustice, insuch a way as to make our brothers, our sons, and our brothers' sons, and their sons' sons, feel that we ought not to have died, is somethingthat is within the reach of all. 

The essence of the doctrine of the Christian redemption is in the factthat he who suffered agony and death was the unique man--that is, Man, the Son of Man, or the Son of God; that he, because he was sinless, didnot deserve to have died; and that this propitiatory divine victim diedin order that he might rise again and that he might raise us up from thedead, in order that he might deliver us from death by applying hismerits to us and showing us the way of life. And the Christ who gavehimself for his brothers in humanity with an absolute self-abnegation isthe pattern for our action to shape itself on. 

All of us, each one of us, can and ought to determine to give as muchof himself as he possibly can--nay, to give more than he can, to exceedhimself, to go beyond himself, to make himself irreplaceable, to givehimself to others in order that he may receive himself back again fromthem. And each one in his own civil calling or office. The word office, _officium_, means obligation, debt, but in the concrete, and that iswhat it always ought to mean in practice. We ought not so much to try toseek that particular calling which we think most fitting and suitablefor ourselves, as to make a calling of that employment in which chance, Providence, or our own will has placed us. 

Perhaps Luther rendered no greater service to Christian civilizationthan that of establishing the religious value of the civil occupation, of shattering the monastic and medieval idea of the religious calling, an idea involved in the mist of human passions and imaginations and thecause of terrible life tragedies. If we could but enter into thecloister and examine the religious vocation of those whom theself-interest of their parents had forced as children into a novice'scell and who had suddenly awakened to the life of the world--if indeedthey ever do awake!--or of those whom their own self-delusions had ledinto it! Luther saw this life of the cloister at close quarters andsuffered it himself, and therefore he was able to understand and feelthe religious value of the civil calling, to which no man is bound byperpetual vows. 

All that the Apostle said in the fourth chapter of his Epistle to theEphesians with regard to the respective functions of Christians in theChurch must be transferred and applied to the civil ornon-ecclesiastical life, for to-day among ourselves theChristian--whether he know it or not, and whether he like it or not--isthe citizen, and just as the Apostle exclaimed, "I am a Roman citizen!"each one of us, even the atheist, might exclaim "I am a Christian!" Andthis demands the _civilizing_, in the sense of dis-ecclesiasticizing, ofChristianity, which was Luther's task, although he himself eventuallybecame the founder of a Church. 

There is a common English phrase, "the right man in the right place. " Towhich we might rejoin, "Cobbler, to thy last!" Who knows what is thepost that suits him best and for which he is most fitted? Does a manhimself know it better than others or do they know it better than he?Who can measure capacities and aptitudes? The religious attitude, undoubtedly, is to endeavour to make the occupation in which we findourselves our vocation, and only in the last resort to change it foranother. 

This question of the proper vocation is possibly the gravest and mostdeep-seated of social problems, that which is at the root of all theothers. That which is known _par excellence_ as the social question isperhaps not so much a problem of the distribution of wealth, of theproducts of labour, as a problem of the distribution of avocations, ofthe modes of production. It is not aptitude--a thing impossible toascertain without first putting it to the test and not always clearlyindicated in a man, for with regard to the majority of callings a man isnot born but made--it is not special aptitude, but rather social, political, and customary reasons that determine a man's occupation. Atcertain times and in certain countries it is caste and heredity; atother times and in other places, the guild or corporation; in latertimes machinery--in almost all cases necessity; liberty scarcely ever. And the tragedy of it culminates in those occupations, pandering toevil, in which the soul is sacrificed for the sake of the livelihood, inwhich the workman works with the consciousness, not of the uselessnessmerely, but of the social perversity, of his work, manufacturing thepoison that will kill him, the weapon, perchance, with which hischildren will be murdered. This, and not the question of wages, is thegravest problem. 

I shall never forget a scene of which I was a witness that took placeon the banks of the river that flows through Bilbao, my native town. Aworkman was hammering at something in a shipwright's yard, workingwithout putting his heart into his work, as if he lacked energy orworked merely for the sake of getting a wage, when suddenly a woman'svoice was heard crying, "Help! help!" A child had fallen into the river. Instantly the man was transformed. With an admirable energy, promptitude, and sang-froid he threw off his clothes and plunged intothe water to rescue the drowning infant. 

Possibly the reason why there is less bitterness in the agrariansocialist movement than in that of the towns is that the field labourer, although his wages and his standard of living are no better than thoseof the miner or artisan, has a clearer consciousness of the social valueof his work. Sowing corn is a different thing from extracting diamondsfrom the earth. 

And it may be that the greatest social progress consists in a certainindifferentiation of labour, in the facility for exchanging one kind ofwork for another, and that other not perhaps a more lucrative, but anobler one--for there are degrees of nobility in labour. But unhappilyit is only too seldom that a man who keeps to one occupation withoutchanging is concerned with making a religious vocation of it, or thatthe man who changes his occupation for another does so from anyreligious motive. 

And do you not know cases in which a man, justifying his action on theground that the professional organism to which he belongs and in whichhe works is badly organized and does not function as it ought, willevade the strict performance of his duty on the pretext that he isthereby fulfilling a higher duty? Is not this insistence upon theliteral carrying out of orders called disciplinarianism, and do notpeople speak disparagingly of bureaucracy and the Pharisaism of publicofficials? And cases occur not unlike that of an intelligent andstudious military officer who should discover the deficiencies of hiscountry's military organization and denounce them to his superiors andperhaps to the public--thereby fulfilling his duty--and who, when onactive service, should refuse to carry out an operation which he wasordered to undertake, believing that there was but scant probability ofsuccess or rather certainty of failure, so long as these deficienciesremained unremedied. He would deserve to be shot. And as for thisquestion of Pharisaism . . . 

And there is always a way of obeying an order while yet retaining thecommand, a way of carrying out what one believes to be an absurdoperation while correcting its absurdity, even though it involve one'sown death. When in my bureaucratic capacity I have come across somelegislative ordinance that has fallen into desuetude because of itsmanifest absurdity, I have always endeavoured to apply it. There isnothing worse than a loaded pistol which nobody uses left lying in somecorner of the house; a child finds it, begins to play with it, and killsits own father. Laws that have fallen into desuetude are the mostterrible of all laws, when the cause of the desuetude is the badness ofthe law. 

And these are not groundless suppositions, and least of all in ourcountry. For there are many who, while they go about looking out for Iknow not what ideal--that is to say, fictitious duties andresponsibilities--neglect the duty of putting their whole soul into theimmediate and concrete business which furnishes them with a living; andthe rest, the immense majority, perform their task perfunctorily, merelyfor the sake of nominally complying with their duty--_para cumplir_, aterribly immoral phrase--in order to get themselves out of a difficulty, to get the job done, to qualify for their wages without earning them, whether these wages be pecuniary or otherwise. 

Here you have a shoemaker who lives by making shoes, and makes them withjust enough care and attention to keep his clientèle together withoutlosing custom. Another shoemaker lives on a somewhat higher spiritualplane, for he has a proper love for his work, and out of pride or asense of honour strives for the reputation of being the best shoemakerin the town or in the kingdom, even though this reputation brings him noincrease of custom or profit, but only renown and prestige. But there isa still higher degree of moral perfection in this business ofshoemaking, and that is for the shoemaker to aspire to become for hisfellow-townsmen the one and only shoemaker, indispensable andirreplaceable, the shoemaker who looks after their footgear so well thatthey will feel a definite loss when he dies--when he is "dead to them, "not merely "dead"[56]--and they will feel that he ought not to havedied. And this will result from the fact that in working for them he wasanxious to spare them any discomfort and to make sure that it should notbe any preoccupation with their feet that should prevent them from beingat leisure to contemplate the higher truths; he shod them for the loveof them and for the love of God in them--he shod them religiously. 

I have chosen this example deliberately, although it may perhaps appearto you somewhat pedestrian. For the fact is that in this business ofshoemaking, the religious, as opposed to the ethical, sense is at a verylow ebb. 

Working men group themselves in associations, they form co-operativesocieties and unions for defence, they fight very justly and nobly forthe betterment of their class; but it is not clear that theseassociations have any great influence on their moral attitude towardstheir work. They have succeeded in compelling employers to employ onlysuch workmen, and no others, as the respective unions shall designate ineach particular case; but in the selection of those designated they paylittle heed to their technical fitness. Often the employer finds italmost impossible to dismiss an inefficient workman on account of hisinefficiency, for his fellow-workers take his part. Their work, moreover, is often perfunctory, performed merely as a pretext forreceiving a wage, and instances even occur when they deliberatelymishandle it in order to injure their employer. 

In attempting to justify this state of things, it may be said that theemployers are a hundred times more blameworthy than the workmen, forthey are not concerned to give a better wage to the man who does betterwork, or to foster the general education and technical proficiency ofthe workman, or to ensure the intrinsic goodness of the articleproduced. The improvement of the product--which, apart from reasons ofindustrial and mercantile competition, ought to be in itself and for thegood of the consumers, for charity's sake, the chief end of thebusiness--is not so regarded either by employers or employed, and thisis because neither the one nor the other have any religious sense oftheir social function. Neither of them seek to make themselvesirreplaceable. The evil is aggravated when the business takes theunhappy form of the impersonal limited company, for where there is nolonger any personal signature there is no longer any of that pride whichseeks to give the signature prestige, a pride which in its way is asubstitute for the craving for eternalization. With the disappearance ofthe concrete individuality, the basis of all religion, the religioussense of the business calling disappears also. 

And what has been said of employers and workmen applies still more tomembers of the liberal professions and public functionaries. There isscarcely a single servant of the State who feels the religious bearingof his official and public duties. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory, nothing more confused, than the feeling among our people with regard totheir duties towards the State, and this sense of duty is still furtherobliterated by the attitude of the Catholic Church, whose action so faras the State is concerned is in strict truth anarchical. It is nouncommon thing to find among its ministers upholders of the morallawfulness of smuggling and contraband as if in disobeying the legallyconstituted authority the smuggler and contrabandist did not sin againstthe Fourth Commandment of the law of God, which in commanding us tohonour our father and mother commands us to obey all lawful authority inso far as the ordinances of such authority are not contrary (and thelevying of these contributions is certainly not contrary) to the law ofGod. 

There are many who, since it is written "In the sweat of thy face shaltthou eat bread, " regard work as a punishment, and therefore theyattribute merely an economico-political, or at best an esthetic, valueto the work of everyday life. For those who take this view--and it isthe view principally held by the Jesuits--the business of life istwofold: there is the inferior and transitory business of winning alivelihood, of winning bread for ourselves and our children in anhonourable, manner--and the elasticity of this honour is well known; andthere is the grand business of our salvation, of winning eternal glory. This inferior or worldly business is to be undertaken not only so as topermit us, without deceiving or seriously injuring our neighbours, tolive decently in accordance with our social position, but also so as toafford us the greatest possible amount of time for attending to theother main business of our life. And there are others who, risingsomewhat above this conception of the work of our civil occupation, aconception which is economical rather than ethical, attain to anesthetic conception and sense of it, and this involves endeavouring toacquire distinction and renown in our occupation, the converting of itinto an art for art's sake, for beauty's sake. But it is necessary torise still higher than this, to attain to an ethical sense of our civilcalling, to a sense which derives from our religious sense, from ourhunger of eternalization. To work at our ordinary civil occupation, witheyes fixed on God, for the love of God, which is equivalent to sayingfor the love of our eternalization, is to make of this work a work ofreligion. 

That saying, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, " does notmean that God condemned man to work, but to the painfulness of it. Itwould have been no condemnation to have condemned man to work itself, for work is the only practical consolation for having been born. And, for a Christian, the proof that God did not condemn man to work itselfconsists in the saying of the Scripture that, before the Fall, while hewas still in a state of innocence, God took man and put him in thegarden "to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. Ii. 15). And how, in fact, would man have passed his time in Paradise if he had had no work to doin keeping it in order? And may it not be that the beatific visionitself is a kind of work?

And even if work were our punishment, we ought to strive to make it, thepunishment itself, our consolation and our redemption; and if we mustneeds embrace some cross or other, there is for each one of us no bettercross than the cross of our own civil calling. For Christ did not say, "Take up my cross and follow me, " but "Take up thy cross and follow me":every man his own cross, for the Saviour's cross the Saviour alone canbear. And the imitation of Christ, therefore, does not consist in thatmonastic ideal so shiningly set forth in the book that commonly bearsthe name of à Kempis, an ideal only applicable to a very limited numberof persons and therefore anti-Christian; but to imitate Christ is totake up each one his own cross, the cross of his own civiloccupation--civil and not merely religions--as Christ took up his cross, the cross of his calling, and to embrace it and carry it, lookingtowards God and striving to make each act of this calling a true prayer. In making shoes and because he makes them a man can gain heaven, provided that the shoemaker strives to be perfect, as a shoemaker, asour Father in heaven is perfect. 

Fourier, the socialist dreamer, dreamed of making work attractive in hisphalansteries by the free choice of vocations and in other ways. Thereis no other way than that of liberty. Wherein consists the charm of thegame of chance, which is a kind of work, if not in the voluntarysubmission of the player to the liberty of Nature--that is, to chance?But do not let us lose ourselves in a comparison between work and play. 

And the sense of making ourselves irreplaceable, of not meriting death, of making our annihilation, if it is annihilation that awaits us, aninjustice, ought to impel us not only to perform our own occupationreligiously, from love of God and love of our eternity andeternalization, but to perform it passionately, tragically if you like. It ought to impel us to endeavour to stamp others with our seal, toperpetuate ourselves in them and in their children by dominating them, to leave on all things the imperishable impress of our signature. Themost fruitful ethic is the ethic of mutual imposition. 

Above all, we must recast in a positive form the negative commandmentswhich we have inherited from the Ancient Law. Thus where it is written, "Thou shalt not lie!" let us understand, "Thou shalt always speak thetruth, in season and out of season!" although it is we ourselves, andnot others, who are judges in each case of this seasonableness. And for"Thou shalt not kill!" let us understand, "Thou shalt give life andincrease it!" And for "Thou shalt not steal!" let us say, "Thou shaltincrease the general wealth!" And for "Thou shalt not commit adultery!""Thou shalt give children, healthy, strong, and good, to thy country andto heaven!" And thus with all the other commandments. 

He who does not lose his life shall not find it. Give yourself then toothers, but in order to give yourself to them, first dominate them. Forit is not possible to dominate except by being dominated. Everyonenourishes himself upon the flesh of that which he devours. In order thatyou may dominate your neighbour you must know and love him. It is byattempting to impose my ideas upon him that I become the recipient ofhis ideas. To love my neighbour is to wish that he may be like me, thathe may be another I--that is to say, it is to wish that I may be he; itis to wish to obliterate the division between him and me, to suppressthe evil. My endeavour to impose myself upon another, to be and live inhim and by him, to make him mine--which is the same as making myselfhis--is that which gives religious meaning to human collectivity, tohuman solidarity. 

The feeling of solidarity originates in myself; since I am a society, Ifeel the need of making myself master of human society; since I am asocial product, I must socialize myself, and from myself I proceed toGod--who is I projected to the All--and from God to each of myneighbours. 

My immediate first impulse is to protest against the inquisitor and toprefer the merchant who comes to offer me his wares. But when myimpressions are clarified by reflection, I begin to see that theinquisitor, when he acts from a right motive, treats me as a man, as anend in myself, and if he molests me it is from a charitable wish to savemy soul; while the merchant, on the other hand, regards me merely as acustomer, as a means to an end, and his indulgence and tolerance is atbottom nothing but a supreme indifference to my destiny. There is muchmore humanity in the inquisitor. 

Similarly there is much more humanity in war than in peace. Non-resistance to evil implies resistance to good, and to take theoffensive, leaving the defensive out of the question, is perhaps thedivinest thing in humanity. War is the school of fraternity and the bondof love; it is war that has brought peoples into touch with oneanother, by mutual aggression and collision, and has been the cause oftheir knowing and loving one another. Human love knows no purer embrace, or one more fruitful in its consequences, than that between victor andvanquished on the battlefield. And even the purified hate that springsfrom war is fruitful. War is, in its strictest sense, the sanctificationof homicide; Cain is redeemed as a leader of armies. And if Cain had notkilled his brother Abel, perhaps he would have died by the hand of Abel. God revealed Himself above all in war; He began by being the God ofbattles; and one of the greatest services of the Cross is that, in theform of the sword-hilt, it protects the hand that wields the sword. 

The enemies of the State say that Cain, the fratricide, was the founderof the State. And we must accept the fact and turn it to the glory ofthe State, the child of war. Civilization began on the day on which oneman, by subjecting another to his will and compelling him to do the workof two, was enabled to devote himself to the contemplation of the worldand to set his captive upon works of luxury. It was slavery that enabledPlato to speculate upon the ideal republic, and it was war that broughtslavery about. Not without reason was Athena the goddess of war and ofwisdom. But is there any need to repeat once again these obvious truths, which, though they have continually been forgotten, are continuallyrediscovered?

And the supreme commandment that arises out of love towards God, and thefoundation of all morality, is this: Yield yourself up entirely, giveyour spirit to the end that you may save it, that you may eternalize it. Such is the sacrifice of life. 

The individual _quâ_ individual, the wretched captive of the instinct ofpreservation and of the senses, cares only about preserving himself, andall his concern is that others should not force their way into hissphere, should not disturb him, should not interrupt his idleness; andin return for their abstention or for the sake of example he refrainsfrom forcing himself upon them, from interrupting their idleness, fromdisturbing them, from taking possession of them. "Do not do unto otherswhat you would not have them do unto you, " he translates thus: I do notinterfere with others--let them not interfere with me. And he shrinksand pines and perishes in this spiritual avarice and this repellentethic of anarchic individualism: each one for himself. And as each oneis not himself, he can hardly live for himself. 

But as soon as the individual feels himself in society, he feels himselfin God, and kindled by the instinct of perpetuation he glows with lovetowards God, and with a dominating charity he seeks to perpetuatehimself in others, to perennialize his spirit, to eternalize it, tounnail God, and his sole desire is to seal his spirit upon other spiritsand to receive their impress in return. He has shaken off the yoke ofhis spiritual sloth and avarice. 

Sloth, it is said, is the mother of all the vices; and in fact slothdoes engender two vices--avarice and envy--which in their turn are thesource of all the rest. Sloth is the weight of matter, in itself inert, within us, and this sloth, while it professes to preserve us byeconomizing our forces, in reality attenuates us and reduces us tonothing. 

In man there is either too much matter or too much spirit, or to put itbetter, either he feels a hunger for spirit--that is, for eternity--orhe feels a hunger for matter--that is, submission to annihilation. Whenspirit is in excess and he feels a hunger for yet more of it, he poursit forth and scatters it abroad, and in scattering it abroad heamplifies it with that of others; and on the contrary, when a man isavaricious of himself and thinks that he will preserve himself better bywithdrawing within himself, he ends by losing all--he is like the manwho received the single talent: he buried it in order that he might notlose it, and in the end he was bereft of it. For to him that hath shallbe given, but from him that hath but a little shall be taken away eventhe little that he hath. 

Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect, we are bidden, and this terrible precept--terrible because for us the infiniteperfection of the Father is unattainable--must be our supreme rule ofconduct. Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that heachieves will be scarcely worth the trouble of achieving. It behoves usto aspire to the impossible, to the absolute and infinite perfection, and to say to the Father, "Father, I cannot--help Thou my impotence. "And He acting in us will achieve it for us. 

And to be perfect is to be all, it is to be myself and to be all else, it is to be humanity, it is to be the Universe. And there is no otherway of being all but to give oneself to all, and when all shall be inall, all will be in each one of us. The apocatastasis is more than amystical dream: it is a rule of action, it is a beacon beckoning us tohigh exploits. 

And from it springs the ethic of invasion, of domination, of aggression, of inquisition if you like. For true charity is a kind of invasion--itconsists in putting my spirit into other spirits, in giving them mysuffering as the food and consolation for their sufferings, in awakeningtheir unrest with my unrest, in sharpening their hunger for God with myhunger for God. It is not charity to rock and lull our brothers to sleepin the inertia and drowsiness of matter, but rather to awaken them tothe uneasiness and torment of spirit. 

To the fourteen works of mercy which we learnt in the Catechism ofChristian Doctrine there should sometimes be added yet another, that ofawakening the sleeper. Sometimes, at any rate, and surely when thesleeper sleeps on the brink of a precipice, it is much more merciful toawaken him than to bury him after he is dead--let us leave the dead tobury their dead. It has been well said, "Whosoever loves thee dearlywill make thee weep, " and charity often causes weeping. "The love thatdoes not mortify does not deserve so divine a name, " said that ardentPortuguese apostle, Fr. Thomé de Jesús, [57] who was also the author ofthis ejaculation--"O infinite fire, O eternal love, who weepest whenthou hast naught to embrace and feed upon and many hearts to burn!" Hewho loves his neighbour burns his heart, and the heart, like green wood, in burning groans and distils itself in tears. 

And to do this is generosity, one of the two mother virtues which areborn when inertia, sloth, is overcome. Most of our miseries come fromspiritual avarice. 

The cure for suffering--which, as we have said, is the collision ofconsciousness with unconsciousness--is not to be submerged inunconsciousness, but to be raised to consciousness and to suffer more. The evil of suffering is cured by more suffering, by higher suffering. Do not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul's wound, forwhen you sleep and no longer feel the suffering, you are not. And to be, that is imperative. Do not then close your eyes to the agonizing Sphinx, but look her in the face and let her seize you in her mouth and crunchyou with her hundred thousand poisonous teeth and swallow you. And whenshe has swallowed you, you will know the sweetness of the taste ofsuffering. 

The way thereto in practice is by the ethic of mutual imposition. Menshould strive to impose themselves upon one another, to give theirspirits to one another, to seal one another's souls. 

There is matter for thought in the fact that the Christian ethic hasbeen called an ethic of slaves. By whom? By anarchists! It is anarchismthat is an ethic of slaves, for it is only the slave that chants thepraises of anarchical liberty. Anarchism, no! but _panarchism_; not thecreed of "Nor God nor master!" but that of "All gods and all masters!"all striving to become gods, to become immortal, and achieving this bydominating others. 

And there are so many ways of dominating. There is even a passive way, or one at least that is apparently passive, of fulfilling at times thislaw of life. Adaptation to environment, imitation, putting oneself inanother's place, sympathy, in a word, besides being a manifestation ofthe unity of the species, is a mode of self-expansion, of being another. To be conquered, or at least to seem to be conquered, is often toconquer; to take what is another's is a way of living in him. 

And in speaking of domination, I do not mean the domination of thetiger. The fox also dominates by cunning, and the hare by flight, andthe viper by poison, and the mosquito by its smallness, and the squid bythe inky fluid with which it darkens the water and under cover of whichit escapes. And no one is scandalized at this, for the same universalFather who gave its fierceness, its talons, and its jaws to the tiger, gave cunning to the fox, swift feet to the hare, poison to the viper, diminutiveness to the mosquito, and its inky fluid to the squid. Andnobleness or ignobleness does not consist in the weapons we use, forevery species and even every individual possesses its own, but rather inthe way in which we use them, and above all in the cause in which wewield them. 

And among the weapons of conquest must be included the weapon ofpatience and of resignation, but a passionate patience and a passionateresignation, containing within itself an active principle and antecedentlongings. You remember that famous sonnet of Milton--Milton, the greatfighter, the great Puritan disturber of the spiritual peace, the singerof Satan--who, when he considered how his light was spent and that onetalent which it is death to hide lodged with him useless, heard thevoice of Patience saying to him, God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait. 

They also serve who only stand and wait--yes, but it is when they waitfor Him passionately, hungeringly, full of longing for immortality inHim. 

And we must impose ourselves, even though it be by our patience. "My cupis small, but I drink out of my cup, " said the egoistical poet of anavaricious people. [58] No, out of my cup all drink, for I wish all todrink out of it; I offer it to them, and my cup grows according to thenumber of those who drink out of it, and all, in putting it to theirlips, leave in it something of their spirit. And while they drink out ofmy cup, I also drink out of theirs. For the more I belong to myself, andthe more I am myself, the more I belong to others; out of the fullnessof myself I overflow upon my brothers, and as I overflow upon them theyenter into me. 

"Be ye perfect, as your Father is perfect, " we are bidden, and ourFather is perfect because He is Himself and because He is in each one ofHis children who live and move and have their being in Him. And the endof perfection is that we all may be one (John xvii. 21), all one body inChrist (Rom. Xii. 5), and that, at the last, when all things are subduedunto the Son, the Son himself may be subject to Him that put all thingsunder him, that God may be all in all. And this is to make the Universeconsciousness, to make Nature a society, and a human society. And thenshall we be able confidently to call God Father. 

I am aware that those who say that ethics is a science will say thatall this commentary of mine is nothing but rhetoric; but each man hashis own language and his own passion--that is to say, each man who knowswhat passion is--and as for the man who knows it not, nothing will itavail him to know science. 

And the passion that finds its expression in this rhetoric, the devoteesof ethical science call egotism. But this egotism is the only trueremedy for egoism, spiritual avarice, the vice of preserving andreserving oneself and of not striving to perennialize oneself by givingoneself. 

"Be not, and ye shall be mightier than all that is, " said Fr. Juan delos Angeles in one of his _Diálogos de la Conquista del Reina de Dios_(_Dial. _, iii. , 8); but what does this "Be not" mean? May it not meanparadoxically--and such a mode of expression is common with themystics--the contrary of that which, at a first and literal reading, itwould appear to mean? Is not the whole ethic of submission and quietisman immense paradox, or rather a great tragic contradiction? Is not themonastic, the strictly monastic, ethic an absurdity? And by the monasticethic I mean that of the solitary Carthusian, that of the hermit, whoflees from the world--perhaps carrying it with him nevertheless--inorder that he may live quite alone with a God who is lonely as himself;not that of the Dominican inquisitor who scoured Provence in search ofAlbigensian hearts to burn. 

"Let God do it all, " someone will say; but if man folds his arms, Godwill go to sleep. 

This Carthusian ethic and that scientific ethic which is derived fromethical science--oh, this science of ethics! rational and rationalisticethics! pedantry of pedantry, all is pedantry!--yes, this perhaps isegoism and coldness of heart. 

There are some who say that they isolate themselves with God in orderthat they may the better work out their salvation, their redemption; butsince sin is collective, redemption must be collective also. "Thereligious is the determination of the whole, and everything outside thisis an illusion of the senses, and that is why the greatest criminal isat bottom innocent, a good-natured man and a saint" (Kierkegaard, _Afsluttende_, etc. , ii. , ii. , cap. Iv. , sect. 2, _a_). 

Are we to understand, on the other hand, that men seek to gain theother, the eternal life, by renouncing this the temporal life? If theother life is anything, it must be a continuation of this, and only assuch a continuation, more or less purified, is it mirrored in ourdesire; and if this is so, such as is this life of time, so will be thelife of eternity. 

"This world and the other are like the two wives of one husband--if hepleases one he makes the other envious, " said an Arab thinker, quoted byWindelband (_Das Heilige_, in vol. Ii. Of _Präludien_); but such athought could only have arisen in the mind of one who had failed toresolve the tragic conflict between his spirit and the world in afruitful warfare, a practical contradiction. "Thy kingdom come" to us;so Christ taught us to pray to the Father, not "May we come to Thykingdom"; and according to the primitive Christian belief the eternallife was to be realized on this earth itself and as a continuation ofthe earthly life. We were made men and not angels in order that we mightseek our happiness through the medium of this life, and the Christ ofthe Christian Faith became, not an angelic, but a human, being, redeeming us by taking upon himself a real and effective body and not anappearance of one merely. And according to this same Faith, even thehighest of the angelical hierarchy adore the Virgin, the supreme symbolof terrestrial Humanity. The angelical ideal, therefore, is not theChristian ideal, and still less is it the human ideal, nor can it be. Anangel, moreover, is a neutral being, without sex and without country. 

It is impossible for us to feel the other life, the eternal life, I havealready repeated more than once, as a life of angelical contemplation;it must be a life of action. Goethe said that "man must believe inimmortality, since in his nature he has a right to it. " And he added:"The conviction of our persistence arises in me from the concept ofactivity. If I work without ceasing to the end, Nature is obliged (_soist die Natur verpflichtet_) to provide me with another form ofexistence, since my actual spirit can bear no more. " Change Nature toGod, and you have a thought that remains Christian in character, for thefirst Fathers of the Church did not believe that the immortality of thesoul was a natural gift--that is to say, something rational--but adivine gift of grace. And that which is of grace is usually, in itsessence, of justice, since justice is divine and gratuitous, notnatural. And Goethe added: "I could begin nothing with an eternalhappiness before me, unless new tasks and new difficulties were given meto overcome. " And true it is that there is no happiness in a vacuity ofcontemplation. 

But may there not be some justification for the morality of the hermit, of the Carthusian, the ethic of the Thebaid? Might we not say, perhaps, that it is necessary to preserve these exceptional types in order thatthey may stand as everlasting patterns for mankind? Do not men breedracehorses, which are useless for any practical kind of work, but whichpreserve the purity of the breed and become the sires of excellenthackneys and hunters? Is there not a luxury of ethics, not lessjustifiable than any other sort of luxury? But, on the other hand, isnot all this substantially esthetics, and not ethics, still lessreligion? May not the contemplative, medieval, monastic ideal beesthetical, and not religious nor even ethical? And after all, those ofthe seekers after solitude who have related to us their conversationwhen they were alone with God have performed an eternalizing work, theyhave concerned themselves with the souls of others. And by this alone, that it has given us an Eckhart, a Seuse, a Tauler, a Ruysbroek, a Juande la Cruz, a Catherine of Siena, an Angela of Foligno, a Teresa deJesús, is the cloister justified. 

But the chief of our Spanish Orders are the Predicadores, founded byDomingo de Guzmán for the aggressive work of extirpating heresy; theCompany of Jesus, a militia with the world as its field of operations(which explains its history); the order of the Escuelas Pías, alsodevoted to a work of an aggressive or invasive nature, that ofinstruction. I shall certainly be reminded that the reform of thecontemplative Order of the Carmelites which Teresa de Jesús undertookwas a Spanish work. Yes, Spanish it was, and in it men sought liberty. 

It was, in fact, the yearning for liberty, for inward liberty, which, inthe troubled days of the Inquisition, led many choice spirits to thecloister. They imprisoned themselves in order that they might be morefree. "Is it not a fine thing that a poor nun of San José can attain tosovereignty over the whole earth and the elements?" said St. Teresa inher _Life_. It was the Pauline yearning for liberty, the longing toshake off the bondage of the external law, which was then very severe, and, as Maestro Fray Luis de León said, very stubborn. 

But did they actually find liberty in the cloister? It is very doubtfulif they did, and to-day it is impossible. For true liberty is not to ridoneself of the external law; liberty is consciousness of the law. Not hewho has shaken off the yoke of the law is free, but he who has madehimself master of the law. Liberty must be sought in the midst of theworld, which is the domain of the law, and of sin, the offspring of thelaw. That which we must be freed from is sin, which is collective. 

Instead of renouncing the world in order that we may dominate it--andwho does not know the collective instinct of domination of thosereligious Orders whose members renounce the world?--what we ought to dois to dominate the world in order that we may be able to renounce it. Not to seek poverty and submission, but to seek wealth in order that wemay use it to increase human consciousness, and to seek power for thesame end. 

It is curious that monks and anarchists should be at enmity with eachother, when fundamentally they both profess the same ethic and arerelated by close ties of kinship. Anarchism tends to become a kind ofatheistic monachism and a religious, rather than an ethical oreconomico-social, doctrine. The one party starts from the assumptionthat man is naturally evil, born in original sin, and that it is throughgrace that he becomes good, if indeed he ever does become good; and theother from the assumption that man is naturally good and is subsequentlyperverted by society. And these two theories really amount to the samething, for in both the individual is opposed to society, as if theindividual had preceded society and therefore were destined to surviveit. And both ethics are ethics of the cloister. 

And the fact that guilt is collective must not actuate me to throw mineupon the shoulders of others, but rather to take upon myself the burdenof the guilt of others, the guilt of all men; not to merge and sink myguilt in the total mass of guilt, but to make this total guilt my own;not to dismiss and banish my own guilt, but to open the doors of myheart to the guilt of all men, to centre it within myself andappropriate it to myself. And each one of us ought to help to remedy theguilt, and just because others do not do so. The fact that society isguilty aggravates the guilt of each member of it. "Someone ought to doit, but why should I? is the ever re-echoed phrase of weak-kneedamiability. Someone ought to do it, so why not I? is the cry of someearnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilousduty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moralevolution. " Thus spoke Mrs. Annie Besant in her autobiography. Thusspoke theosophy. 

The fact that society is guilty aggravates the guilt of each one, and heis most guilty who most is sensible of the guilt. Christ, the innocent, since he best knew the intensity of the guilt, was in a certain sensethe most guilty. In him the culpability, together with the divinity, ofhumanity arrived at the consciousness of itself. Many are wont to beamused when they read how, because of the most trifling faults, faultsat which a man of the world would merely smile, the greatest saintscounted themselves the greatest sinners. But the intensity of the faultis not measured by the external act, but by the consciousness of it, andan act for which the conscience of one man suffers acutely makesscarcely any impression on the conscience of another. And in a saint, conscience may be developed so fully and to such a degree ofsensitiveness that the slightest sin may cause him more remorse than hiscrime causes the greatest criminal. And sin rests upon our consciousnessof it, it is in him who judges and in so far as he judges. When a mancommits a vicious act believing in good faith that he is doing avirtuous action, we cannot hold him morally guilty, while on the otherhand that man is guilty who commits an act which he believes to bewrong, even though in itself the act is indifferent or perhapsbeneficent. The act passes away, the intention remains, and the evil ofthe evil act is that it corrupts the intention, that in knowingly doingwrong a man is predisposed to go on doing it, that it blurs theconscience. And doing evil is not the same as being evil. Evil blurs theconscience, and not only the moral conscience but the general, psychicalconsciousness. And everything that exalts and expands consciousness isgood, while that which depresses and diminishes it is evil. 

And here we might raise the question which, according to Plato, waspropounded by Socrates, as to whether virtue is knowledge, which isequivalent to asking whether virtue is rational. 

The ethicists--those who maintain that ethics is a science, those whomthe reading of these divagations will provoke to exclaim, "Rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric!"--would appear to think that virtue is the fruit ofknowledge, of rational study, and that even mathematics help us to bebetter men. I do not know, but for my part I feel that virtue, likereligion, like the longing never to die--and all these are fundamentallythe same thing--is the fruit of passion. 

But, I shall be asked, What then is passion? I do not know, or rather, Iknow full well, because I feel it, and since I feel it there is no needfor me to define it to myself. Nay, more; I fear that if I were toarrive at a definition of it, I should cease to feel it and to possessit. Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object. It is easier for the fire to find something to burn than for somethingcombustible to find the fire. 

That this may appear empty and sophistical well I know. And I shall alsobe told that there is the science of passion and the passion of science, and that it is in the moral sphere that reason and life unite together. 

I do not know, I do not know, I do not know. . . . And perhaps I may besaying fundamentally the same thing, although more confusedly, that myimaginary adversaries say, only more clearly, more definitely, and morerationally, those adversaries whom I imagine in order that I may havesomeone to fight. I do not know, I do not know. . . . But what they sayfreezes me and sounds to me as though it proceeded from emptiness offeeling. 

And, returning to our former question, Is virtue knowledge?--Isknowledge virtue? For they are two distinct questions. Virtue may be ascience, the science of acting rightly, without every other sciencebeing therefore virtue. The virtue of Machiavelli is a science, and itcannot be said that his _virtu_ is always moral virtue It is well known, moreover, that the cleverest and the most learned men are not the best. 

No, no, no! Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how todiscourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethicshow to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to behypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be the pedantry of logic, or ofesthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy. 

Reason perhaps teaches certain bourgeois virtues, but it does not makeeither heroes or saints. Perhaps the saint is he who does good not forgood's sake, but for God's sake, for the sake of eternalization. 

Perhaps, on the other hand, culture, or as I should say Culture--oh, this culture!--which is primarily the work of philosophers and men ofscience, is a thing which neither heroes nor saints have had any sharein the making of. For saints have concerned themselves very little withthe progress of human culture; they have concerned themselves ratherwith the salvation of the individual souls of those amongst whom theylived. Of what account in the history of human culture is our San Juande la Cruz, for example--that fiery little monk, as culture, in perhapssomewhat uncultured phrase, has called him--compared with Descartes?

All those saints, burning with religious charity towards theirneighbours, hungering for their own and others' eternalization, who wentabout burning hearts, inquisitors, it may be--what have all those saintsdone for the progress of the science of ethics? Did any of them discoverthe categorical imperative, like the old bachelor of Königsberg, who, ifhe was not a saint, deserved to be one?

The son of a famous professor of ethics, one who scarcely ever openedhis lips without mentioning the categorical imperative, was lamenting tome one day the fact that he lived in a desolating dryness of spirit, ina state of inward emptiness. And I was constrained to answer him thus:"My friend, your father had a subterranean river flowing through hisspirit, a fresh current fed by the beliefs of his early childhood, byhopes in the beyond; and while he thought that he was nourishing hissoul with this categorical imperative or something of that sort, he wasin reality nourishing it with those waters which had their spring in hischildish days. And it may be that to you he has given the flower of hisspirit, his rational doctrines of ethics, but not the root, not thesubterranean source, not the irrational substratum. "

How was it that Krausism took root here in Spain, while Kantism andHegelianism did not, although the two latter systems are much moreprofound, morally and philosophically, than the first? Because intransplanting the first, its roots were transplanted with it. Thephilosophical thought of a people or a period is, as it were, theflower, the thing that is external and above ground; but this flower, orfruit if you prefer it, draws its sap from the root of the plant, andthis root, which is in and under the ground, is the religious sense. Thephilosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the mentalevolution of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feelingof Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practicalpart of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples whohave not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhapswere incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and weSpaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some rootshere--more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed--it isbecause Krause had roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl hasdemonstrated in his _Geschichte des Pietismus_, has specificallyCatholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather thepersistence, of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestantrationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spainbecame followers of Krause. 

And since we Spaniards are Catholic--whether we know it or not, andwhether we like it or not--and although some of us may claim to berationalists or atheists, perhaps the greatest service we can render tothe cause of culture, and of what is of more value than culture, religiousness--if indeed they are not the same thing--is in endeavouringto formulate clearly to ourselves this subconscious, social, or popularCatholicism of ours. And that is what I have attempted to do in thiswork. 

What I call the tragic sense of life in men and peoples is at any rateour tragic sense of life, that of Spaniards and the Spanish people, asit is reflected in my consciousness, which is a Spanish consciousness, made in Spain. And this tragic sense of life is essentially the Catholicsense of it, for Catholicism, and above all popular Catholicism, istragic. The people abhors comedy. When Pilate--the type of the refinedgentleman, the superior person, the esthete, the rationalist if youlike--proposes to give the people comedy and mockingly presents Christto them, saying, "Behold the man!" the people mutinies and shouts"Crucify him! Crucify him!" The people does not want comedy but tragedy. And that which Dante, the great Catholic, called the Divine Comedy, isthe most tragical tragedy that has ever been written. 

And as I have endeavoured in these essays to exhibit the soul of aSpaniard, and therewithal the Spanish soul, I have curtailed the numberof quotations from Spanish writers, while scattering with perhaps toolavish a hand those from the writers of other countries. For all humansouls are brother-souls. 

And there is one figure, a comically tragic figure, a figure in whichis revealed all that is profoundly tragic in the human comedy, thefigure of Our Lord Don Quixote, the Spanish Christ, who resumes andincludes in himself the immortal soul of my people. Perhaps the passionand death of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is the passion anddeath of the Spanish people, its death and resurrection. And there is aQuixotesque philosophy and even a Quixotesque metaphysic, there is aQuixotesque logic, and also a Quixotesque ethic and a Quixotesquereligious sense--the religious sense of Spanish Catholicism. This is thephilosophy, this is the logic, this is the ethic, this is the religioussense, that I have endeavoured to outline, to suggest rather than todevelop, in this work. To develop it rationally, no; the Quixotesquemadness does not submit to scientific logic. 

And now, before concluding and bidding my readers farewell, it remainsfor me to speak of the rôle that is reserved for Don Quixote in themodern European tragi-comedy. 

Let us see, in the next and last essay, what this may be. 

FOOTNOTES:

[54] Act II. , Scene 4: "I am dreaming and I wish to act rightly, forgood deeds are not lost, though they be wrought in dreams. "

[55] Act III. , Scene 10: "Let us aim at the eternal, the glory that doesnot wane, where bliss slumbers not and where greatness does not repose. "

[56] "Se _les_ muera, " y no sólo "se muera. "

[57] _Trabalhos de Jesus_, part i. 

[58] De Musset. 

CONCLUSION

DON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY

"A voice crying in the wilderness!"--ISA. Xl. 3. 

Need is that I bring to a conclusion, for the present at any rate, theseessays that threaten to become like a tale that has no ending. They havegone straight from my hands to the press in the form of a kind ofimprovization upon notes collected during a number of years, and inwriting each essay I have not had before me any of those that precededit. And thus they will go forth full of inward contradictions--apparentcontradictions, at any rate--like life and like me myself. 

My sin, if any, has been that I have embellished them to excess withforeign quotations, many of which will appear to have been dragged inwith a certain degree of violence. But I will explain this another time. 

A few years after Our Lord Don Quixote had journeyed through Spain, Jacob Böhme declared in his _Aurora_ (chap xi. , § 142) that he did notwrite a story or history related to him by others, but that he himselfhad had to stand in the battle, which he found to be full of heavystrivings, and wherein he was often struck down to the ground like allother men; and a little further on (§ 152) he adds: "Although I mustbecome a spectacle of scorn to the world and the devil, yet my hope isin God concerning the life to come; in Him will I venture to hazard itand not resist or strive against the Spirit. Amen. " And like thisQuixote of the German intellectual world, neither will I resist theSpirit. 

And therefore I cry with the voice of one crying in the wilderness, andI send forth my cry from this University of Salamanca, a University thatarrogantly styled itself _omnium scientiarum princeps_, and whichCarlyle called a stronghold of ignorance and which a French man ofletters recently called a phantom University; I send it forth from thisSpain--"the land of dreams that become realities, the rampart of Europe, the home of the knightly ideal, " to quote from a letter which theAmerican poet Archer M. Huntington sent me the other day--from thisSpain which was the head and front of the Counter-Reformation in thesixteenth century. And well they repay her for it!

In the fourth of these essays I spoke of the essence of Catholicism. Andthe chief factors in _de-essentializing_ it--that is, inde-Catholicizing Europe--have been the Renaissance, the Reformation, andthe Revolution, which for the ideal of an eternal, ultra-terrestriallife, have substituted the ideal of progress, of reason, of science, or, rather, of Science with the capital letter. And last of all, thedominant ideal of to-day, comes Culture. 

And in the second half of the nineteenth century, an age essentiallyunphilosophical and technical, dominated by a myopic specialism and byhistorical materialism, this ideal took a practical form, not so much inthe popularization as in the vulgarization of science--or, rather, ofpseudo-science--venting itself in a flood of cheap, popular, andpropagandist literature. Science sought to popularize itself as if itwere its function to come down to the people and subserve theirpassions, and not the duty of the people to rise to science and throughscience to rise to higher heights, to new and profounder aspirations. 

All this led Brunetière to proclaim the bankruptcy of science, and thisscience--if you like to call it science--did in effect become bankrupt. And as it failed to satisfy, men continued their quest for happiness, but without finding it, either in wealth, or in knowledge, or in power, or in pleasure, or in resignation, or in a good conscience, or inculture. And the result was pessimism. 

Neither did the gospel of progress satisfy. What end did progress serve?Man would not accommodate himself to rationalism; the _Kulturkampf_ didnot suffice him; he sought to give a final finality to life, and what Icall the final finality is the real _hontôs hon_. And the famous _maladiedu siècle_, which announced itself in Rousseau and was exhibited moreplainly in Sénancour's _Obermann_ than in any other character, neitherwas nor is anything else but the loss of faith in the immortality of thesoul, in the human finality of the Universe. 

The truest symbol of it is to be found in a creation of fiction, Dr. Faustus. 

This immortal Dr. Faustus, the product of the Renaissance and theReformation, first comes into our ken at the beginning of theseventeenth century, when in 1604 he is introduced to us by ChristopherMarlowe. This is the same character that Goethe was to rediscover twocenturies later, although in certain respects the earlier Faust was thefresher and more spontaneous. And side by side with him Mephistophelesappears, of whom Faust asks: "What good will my soul do thy lord?""Enlarge his kingdom, " Mephistopheles replies. "Is that the reason whyhe tempts us thus?" the Doctor asks again, and the evil spirit answers:"_Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris_, " which, mistranslated intoRomance, is the equivalent of our proverb--"The misfortune of many isthe consolation of fools. " "Where we are is hell, and where hell isthere must we ever be, " Mephistopheles continues, to which Faust answersthat he thinks hell's a fable and asks him who made the world. Andfinally this tragic Doctor, tortured with our torture, meets Helen, who, although no doubt Marlowe never suspected it, is none other thanrenascent Culture. And in Marlowe's _Faust_ there is a scene that isworth the whole of the second part of the _Faust_ of Goethe. Faust saysto Helen: "Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss"--and he kissesher--

 Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for Helen is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. 

Give me my soul again!--the cry of Faust, the Doctor, when, after havingkissed Helen, he is about to be lost eternally. For the primitive Fausthas no ingenuous Margaret to save him. This idea of his salvation wasthe invention of Goethe. And is there not a Faust whom we all know, ourown Faust? This Faust has studied Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Medicine, and even Theology, only to find that we can know nothing, and he hassought escape in the open country (_hinaus ins weite Land_) and hasencountered Mephistopheles, the embodiment of that force which, everwilling evil, ever achieves good in its own despite. This Faust has beenled by Mephistopheles to the arms of Margaret, child of thesimple-hearted people, she whom Faust, the overwise, had lost. Andthanks to her--for she gave herself to him--this Faust is saved, redeemed by the people that believes with a simple faith. But there wasa second part, for that Faust was the anecdotical Faust and not thecategorical Faust of Goethe, and he gave himself again to Culture, toHelen, and begot Euphorion upon her, and everything ends among mysticalchoruses with the discovery of the eternal feminine. Poor Euphorion!

And this Helen is the spouse of the fair Menelaus, the Helen whom Parisbore away, who was the cause of the war of Troy, and of whom the ancientTrojans said that no one should be incensed because men fought for awoman who bore so terrible a likeness to the immortal gods. But Irather think that Faust's Helen was that other Helen who accompaniedSimon Magus, and whom he declared to be the divine wisdom. And Faust cansay to her: Give me my soul again!

For Helen with her kisses takes away our soul. And what we long for andhave need of is soul--soul of bulk and substance. 

But the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution came, bringingHelen to us, or, rather, urged on by Helen, and now they talk to usabout Culture and Europe. 

Europe! This idea of Europe, primarily and immediately of geographicalsignificance, has been converted for us by some magical process into akind of metaphysical category. Who can say to-day--in Spain, at anyrate--what Europe is? I only know that it is a shibboleth (_vide_ my_Tres Ensayos_). And when I proceed to examine what it is that ourEuropeanizers call Europe, it sometimes seems to me that much of itsperiphery remains outside of it--Spain, of course, and also England, Italy, Scandinavia, Russia--and hence it is reduced to the centralportion, Franco-Germany, with its annexes and dependencies. 

All this is the consequence, I repeat, of the Renaissance and theReformation, which, although apparently they lived in a state ofinternecine war, were twin-brothers. The Italians of the Renaissancewere all of them Socinians; the humanists, with Erasmus at their head, regarded Luther, the German monk, as a barbarian, who derived hisdriving force from the cloister, as did Bruno and Campanella. But thisbarbarian was their twin-brother, and though their antagonist he wasalso the antagonist of the common enemy. All this, I say, is due to theRenaissance and the Reformation, and to what was the offspring of thesetwo, the Revolution, and to them we owe also a new Inquisition, that ofscience or culture, which turns against those who refuse to submit toits orthodoxy the weapons of ridicule and contempt. 

When Galileo sent his treatise on the earth's motion to the Grand Dukeof Tuscany, he told him that it was meet that that which the higherauthorities had determined should be believed and obeyed, and that heconsidered his treatise "as poetry or as a dream, and as such I desireyour highness to receive it. " And at other times he calls it a "chimera"or a "mathematical caprice. " And in the same way in these essays, forfear also--why not confess it?--of the Inquisition, of the modern, thescientific, Inquisition, I offer as a poetry, dream, chimera, mysticalcaprice, that which springs from what is deepest in me. And I say withGalileo, _Eppur si muove!_ But is it only because of this fear? Ah, no!for there is another, more tragic Inquisition, and that is theInquisition which the modern man, the man of culture, the European--andsuch am I, whether I will or not--carries within him. There is a moreterrible ridicule, and that is the ridicule with which a mancontemplates his own self. It is my reason that laughs at my faith anddespises it. 

And it is here that I must betake me to my Lord Don Quixote in orderthat I may learn of him how to confront ridicule and overcome it, and aridicule which perhaps--who knows?--he never knew. 

Yes, yes--how shall my reason not smile at these dilettantesque, would-be mystical, pseudo-philosophical interpretations, in which thereis anything rather than patient study and--shall I sayscientific?--objectivity and method? And nevertheless . . . _eppur simuove!_

_Eppur si muove!_ And I take refuge in dilettantism, in what a pedantwould call _demi-mondaine_ philosophy, as a shelter against the pedantryof specialists, against the philosophy of the professional philosophers. And who knows?. . . Progress usually comes from the barbarian, and thereis nothing more stagnant than the philosophy of the philosophers andthe theology of the theologians. 

Let them talk to us of Europe! The civilization of Thibet is parallelwith ours, and men who disappear like ourselves have lived and areliving by it. And over all civilizations there hovers the shadow ofEcclesiastes, with his admonition, "How dieth the wise man?--as thefool" (ii. 16). 

Among the people of my country there is an admirable reply to thecustomary interrogation, "How are you?"[59] and it is "Living. " And thatis the truth--we are living, and living as much as all the rest. Whatcan a man ask for more? And who does not recollect the verse?--

 _Coda vez que considero que me tengo de morir, tiendo la capa en el suelo y no me harto de dormir. _[60]

But no, not sleeping, but dreaming--dreaming life, since life is adream. 

Among us Spaniards another phrase has very rapidly passed into currentusage, the expression "It's a question of passing the time, " or "killingthe time. " And, in fact, we make time in order to kill it. But there issomething that has always preoccupied us as much as or more than passingthe time--a formula which denotes an esthetical attitude--and that is, gaining eternity, which is the formula of the religious attitude. Thetruth is, we leap from the esthetic and the economic to the religious, passing over the logical and the ethical; we jump from art to religion. 

One of our younger novelists, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, in his recent novel, _La Pata de la Raposa_, has told us that the idea of death is the trap, and spirit the fox or the wary virtue with which to circumvent theambushes set by fatality, and he continues: "Caught in the trap, weakmen and weak peoples lie prone on the ground . . . ; to robust spirits andstrong peoples the rude shock of danger gives clear-sightedness; theyquickly penetrate into the heart of the immeasurable beauty of life, andrenouncing for ever their original hastiness and folly, emerge from thetrap with muscles taut for action and with the soul's vigour, power, andefficiency increased a hundredfold. " But let us see; weak men . . . Weakpeoples . . . Robust spirits . . . Strong peoples . . . What does all thismean? I do not know. What I think I know is that some individuals andpeoples have not yet really thought about death and immortality, havenot felt them, and that others have ceased to think about them, orrather ceased to feel them. And the fact that they have never passedthrough the religious period is not, I think, a matter for either men orpeoples to boast about. 

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, andthere are, indeed, some who resign themselves to it and accept it as itis, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the"trap. " But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a manthat the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does notconsole him for them, but is another misfortune in addition. "[61] And, furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart, " as Fray Diego deEstella said (_Vanidad del Mundo_, cap. Xxi. ). 

A short time ago a reply that I made to those who reproached usSpaniards for our scientific incapacity appeared to scandalize somepeople. After having remarked that the electric light and the steamengine function here in Spain just as well as in the countries wherethey were invented, and that we make use of logarithms as much as theydo in the country where the idea of them was first conceived, Iexclaimed, "Let others invent!"--a paradoxical expression which I do notretract. We Spaniards ought to appropriate to ourselves some of thosesage counsels which Count Joseph de Maistre gave to the Russians, apeople not unlike ourselves. In his admirable letters to CountRasoumowski on public education in Russia, he said that a nation shouldnot think the worse of itself because it was not made for science; thatthe Romans had no understanding of the arts, neither did they possess amathematician, which, however, did not prevent them from playing theirpart in the world; and in particular we should take to heart everythingthat he said about that crowd of arrogant sciolists who idolize thetastes, the fashions, and the languages of foreign countries, and areever ready to pull down whatever they despise--and they despiseeverything. 

We have not the scientific spirit? And what of that, if we have someother spirit? And who can tell if the spirit that we have is or is notcompatible with the scientific spirit?

But in saying "Let others invent!" I did not mean to imply that we mustbe content with playing a passive rôle. No. For them their science, bywhich we shall profit; for us, our own work. It is not enough to be onthe defensive, we must attack. 

But we must attack wisely and cautiously. Reason must be our weapon. Itis the weapon even of the fool. Our sublime fool and our exemplar, DonQuixote, after he had destroyed with two strokes of his sword thatpasteboard visor "which he had fitted to his head-piece, made it anew, placing certain iron bars within it, in such a manner that he restedsatisfied with its solidity, and without wishing to make a second trialof it, he deputed and held it in estimation of a most excellentvisor. "[62] And with the pasteboard visor on his head he made himselfimmortal--that is to say, he made himself ridiculous. For it was bymaking himself ridiculous that Don Quixote achieved his immortality. 

And there are so many ways of making ourselves ridiculous I . . . Cournotsaid _(Traité de l'enchaînement des idées fondamentales_, etc. , § 510):"It is best not to speak to either princes or peoples of theprobabilities of death; princes will punish this temerity with disgrace;the public will revenge itself with ridicule. " True, and therefore it issaid that we must live as the age lives. _Corrumpere et corrumpi sæculumvocatur_ (Tacitus: _Germania_ 19). 

It is necessary to know how to make ourselves ridiculous, and not onlyto others but to ourselves. And more than ever to-day, when there is somuch chatter about our backwardness compared with other civilizedpeoples, to-day when a parcel of shallow-brained critics say that wehave had no science, no art, no philosophy, no Renaissance, (of this wehad perhaps too much), no anything, these same critics being ignorant ofour real history, a history that remains yet to be written, the firsttask being to undo the web of calumniation and protest that has beenwoven around it. 

Carducci, the author of the phrase about the _contorcimentidell'affannosa grandiositá spagnola_, has written (in _Mosche Cochiere_)that "even Spain, which never attained the hegemony of the world ofthought, had her Cervantes. " But was Cervantes a solitary and isolatedphenomenon, without roots, without ancestry, without a foundation? Thatan Italian rationalist, remembering that it was Spain that reactedagainst the Renaissance in his country, should say that Spain _non ebbeegemonia mai di pensiero_ is, however, readily comprehended. Was thereno importance, was there nothing akin to cultural hegemony, in theCounter-Reformation, of which Spain was the champion, and which in pointof fact began with the sack of Rome by the Spaniards, a providentialchastisement of the city of the pagan popes of the pagan Renaissance?Apart from the question as to whether the Counter-Reformation was goodor bad, was there nothing akin to hegemony in Loyola or the Council ofTrent? Previous to this Council, Italy witnessed a nefarious andunnatural union between Christianity and Paganism, or rather, betweenimmortalism and mortalism, a union to which even some of the Popesthemselves consented in their souls; theological error was philosophicaltruth, and all difficulties were solved by the accommodating formula_salva fide_. But it was otherwise after the Council; after the Councilcame the open and avowed struggle between reason and faith, science andreligion. And does not the fact that this change was brought about, thanks principally to Spanish obstinacy, point to something akin tohegemony?

Without the Counter-Reformation, would the Reformation have followed thecourse that it did actually follow? Without the Counter-Reformationmight not the Reformation, deprived of the support of pietism, haveperished in the gross rationalism of the _Aufklärung_, of the age ofEnlightenment? Would nothing have been changed had there been no CharlesI. , no Philip II. , our great Philip?

A negative achievement, it will be said. But what is that? What isnegative? what is positive? At what point in time--a line alwayscontinuing in the same direction, from the past to the future--does thezero occur which denotes the boundary between the positive and thenegative? Spain, which is said to be the land of knights and rogues--andall of them rogues--has been the country most slandered by historyprecisely because it championed the Counter-Reformation. And becauseits arrogance has prevented it from stepping down into the publicforum, into the world's vanity fair, and publishing its ownjustification. 

Let us leave on one side Spain's eight centuries of warfare against theMoors, during which she defended Europe from Mohammedanism, her work ofinternal unification, her discovery of America and the Indies--for thiswas the achievement of Spain and Portugal, and not of Columbus and Vascoda Gama--let us leave all this, and more than this, on one side, and itis not a little thing. Is it not a cultural achievement to have createda score of nations, reserving nothing for herself, and to have begotten, as the Conquistadores did, free men on poor Indian slaves? Apart fromall this, does our mysticism count for nothing in the world of thought?Perhaps the peoples whose souls Helen will ravish away with her kissesmay some day have to return to this mysticism to find their souls again. 

But, as everybody knows, Culture is composed of ideas and only of ideas, and man is only Culture's instrument. Man for the idea, and not the ideafor man; the substance for the shadow. The end of man is to createscience, to catalogue the Universe, so that it may be handed back to Godin order, as I wrote years ago in my novel, _Amor y Pedagogia_. Man, apparently, is not even an idea. And at the end of all, the human racewill fall exhausted at the foot of a pile of libraries--whole woodsrased to the ground to provide the paper that is stored away inthem--museums, machines, factories, laboratories . . . In order tobequeath them--to whom? For God will surely not accept them. 

That horrible regenerationist literature, almost all of it an imposture, which the loss of our last American colonies provoked, led us into thepedantry of extolling persevering and silent effort--and this with greatvociferation, vociferating silence--of extolling prudence, exactitude, moderation, spiritual fortitude, synteresis, equanimity, the socialvirtues, and the chiefest advocates of them were those of us who lackedthem most. Almost all of us Spaniards fell into this ridiculous mode ofliterature, some more and some less. And so it befell that thatarch-Spaniard Joaquín Costa, one of the least European spirits we everhad, invented his famous saying that we must Europeanize Spain, and, while proclaiming that we must lock up the sepulchre of the Cid with asevenfold lock, Cid-like urged us to--conquer Africa! And I myselfuttered the cry, "Down with Don Quixote!" and from this blasphemy, whichmeant the very opposite of what it said--such was the fashion of thehour--sprang my _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_ and my cult of Quixotismas the national religion. 

I wrote that book in order to rethink _Don Quixote_ in opposition to theCervantists and erudite persons, in order to make a living work of whatwas and still is for the majority a dead letter. What does it matter tome what Cervantes intended or did not intend to put into it and what heactually did put into it? What is living in it is what I myself discoverin it, whether Cervantes put it there or not, what I myself put into andunder and over it, and what we all put into it. I wanted to hunt downour philosophy in it. 

For the conviction continually grows upon me that our philosophy, theSpanish philosophy, is liquescent and diffused in our literature, in ourlife, in our action, in our mysticism, above all, and not inphilosophical systems. It is concrete. And is there not perhaps as muchphilosophy or more in Goethe, for example, as in Hegel? The poetry ofJorge Manrique, the Romancero, _Don Quijote_, _La Vida es Sueño_, the_Subida al Monte Carmelo_, imply an intuition of the world and a conceptof life (_Weltanschauung und Lebensansicht_). And it was difficult forthis philosophy of ours to formulate itself in the second half of thenineteenth century, a period that was aphilosophical, positivist, technicist, devoted to pure history and the natural sciences, a periodessentially materialist and pessimist. 

Our language itself, like every cultured language, contains withinitself an implicit philosophy. 

A language, in effect, is a potential philosophy. Platonism is the Greeklanguage which discourses in Plato, unfolding its secular metaphors;scholasticism is the philosophy of the dead Latin of the Middle Ageswrestling with the popular tongues; the French language discourses inDescartes, the German in Kant and in Hegel, and the English in Hume andin Stuart Mill. For the truth is that the logical starting-point of allphilosophical speculation is not the I, neither is it representation(_Vorstellung_), nor the world as it presents itself immediately to thesenses; but it is mediate or historical representation, humanlyelaborated and such as it is given to us principally in the language bymeans of which we know the world; it is not psychical but spiritualrepresentation. When we think, we are obliged to set out, whether weknow it not and whether we will or not, from what has been thought byothers who came before us and who environ us. Thought is an inheritance. Kant thought in German, and into German he translated Hume and Rousseau, who thought in English and French respectively. And did not Spinozathink in Judeo-Portuguese, obstructed by and contending with Dutch?

Thought rests upon prejudgements, and prejudgements pass into language. To language Bacon rightly ascribed not a few of the errors of the _idolafori_. But is it possible to philosophize in pure algebra or even inEsperanto? In order to see the result of such an attempt one has only toread the work of Avenarius on the criticism of pure experience (_reineErfahrung_), of this prehuman or inhuman experience. And even Avenarius, who was obliged to invent a language, invented one that was based uponthe Latin tradition, with roots which carry in their metaphoricalimplications a content of impure experience, of human social experience. 

All philosophy is, therefore, at bottom philology. And philology, withits great and fruitful law of analogical formations, opens wide the doorto chance, to the irrational, to the absolutely incommensurable. Historyis not mathematics, neither is philosophy. And how many philosophicalideas are not strictly owing to something akin to rhyme, to thenecessity of rightly placing a consonant! In Kant himself there is agreat deal of this, of esthetic symmetry, rhyme. 

Representation is, therefore, like language, like reason itself--whichis simply internal language--a social and racial product, and race, theblood of the spirit, is language, as Oliver Wendell Holmes has said, andas I have often repeated. 

It was in Athens and with Socrates that our Western philosophy firstbecame mature, conscious of itself, and it arrived at this consciousnessby means of the dialogue, of social conversation. And it is profoundlysignificant that the doctrine of innate ideas, of the objective andnormative value of ideas, of what Scholasticism afterwards knew asRealism, should have formulated itself in dialogues. And these ideas, which constitute reality, are names, as Nominalism showed. Not that theymay not be more than names (_flatus vocis_), but that they are nothingless than names. Language is that which gives us reality, and not as amere vehicle of reality, but as its true flesh, of which all the rest, dumb or inarticulate representation, is merely the skeleton. And thuslogic operates upon esthetics, the concept upon the expression, upon theword, and not upon the brute perception. 

And this is true even in the matter of love. Love does not discover thatit is love until it speaks, until it says, I love thee! In Stendhal'snovel, _La Chartreuse de Parme_, it is with a very profound intuitionthat Count Mosca, furious with jealousy because of the love which hebelieves unites the Duchess of Sanseverina with his nephew Fabrice, ismade to say, "I must be calm; if my manner is violent the duchess, simply because her vanity is piqued, is capable of following Belgirate, and then, during the journey, chance may lead to a word which will givea name to the feelings they bear towards each other, and thereupon in amoment all the consequences will follow. "

Even so--all things were made by the word, and the word was in thebeginning. 

Thought, reason--that is, living language--is an inheritance, and thesolitary thinker of Aben Tofail, the Arab philosopher of Guadix, is asabsurd as the ego of Descartes. The real and concrete truth, not themethodical and ideal, is: _homo sum, ergo cogito_. To feel oneself a manis more immediate than to think. But, on the other hand, History, theprocess of culture, finds its perfection and complete effectivity onlyin the individual; the end of History and Humanity is man, each man, each individual. _Homo sum, ergo cogito; cogito ut sim Michael deUnamuno_. The individual is the end of the Universe. 

And we Spaniards feel this very strongly, that the individual is the endof the Universe. The introspective individuality of the Spaniard waspointed out by Martin A. S. Hume in a passage in _The SpanishPeople_, [63] upon which I commented in an essay published in _La EspañaModerna_. [64]

And it is perhaps this same introspective individualism which has notpermitted the growth on Spanish soil of strictly philosophical--or, rather, metaphysical--systems. And this in spite of Suárez, whose formalsubtilties do not merit the name of philosophy. 

Our metaphysics, if we can be said to possess such a thing, has beenmetanthropics, and our metaphysicians have been philologists--or, rather, humanists--in the most comprehensive sense of the term. 

Menéndez de Pelayo, as Benedetto Croce very truly said (_Estetica_, bibliographical appendix), was inclined towards metaphysical idealism, but he appeared to wish to take something from other systems, even fromempirical theories. For this reason Croce considers that his work(referring to his _Historia de las ideas estéticas de España_) suffersfrom a certain uncertainty, from the theoretical point of view of itsauthor, Menéndez de Pelayo, which was that of a perfervid Spanishhumanist, who, not wishing to disown the Renaissance, invented what hecalled Vivism, the philosophy of Luis Vives, and perhaps for no otherreason than because he himself, like Vives, was an eclectic Spaniard ofthe Renaissance. And it is true that Menéndez de Pelayo, whosephilosophy is certainly all uncertainty, educated in Barcelona in thetimidities of the Scottish philosophy as it had been imported into theCatalan spirit--that creeping philosophy of common sense, which wasanxious not to compromise itself and yet was all compromise, and whichis so well exemplified in Balmes--always shunned all strenuous inwardcombat and formed his consciousness upon compromises. 

Angel Ganivet, a man all divination and instinct, was more happilyinspired, in my opinion, when he proclaimed that the Spanish philosophywas that of Seneca, the pagan Stoic of Cordoba, whom not a fewChristians regarded as one of themselves, a philosophy lacking inoriginality of thought but speaking with great dignity of tone andaccent. His accent was a Spanish, Latino-African accent, not Hellenic, and there are echoes of him in Tertullian--Spanish, too, at heart--whobelieved in the corporal and substantial nature of God and the soul, andwho was a kind of Don Quixote in the world of Christian thought in thesecond century. 

But perhaps we must look for the hero of Spanish thought, not in anyactual flesh-and-bone philosopher, but in a creation of fiction, a manof action, who is more real than all the philosophers--Don Quixote. There is undoubtedly a philosophical Quixotism, but there is also aQuixotic philosophy. May it not perhaps be that the philosophy of theConquistadores, of the Counter-Reformers, of Loyola, and above all, inthe order of abstract but deeply felt thought, that of our mystics, was, in its essence, none other than this? What was the mysticism of St. Johnof the Cross but a knight-errantry of the heart in the divine warfare?

And the philosophy of Don Quixote cannot strictly be called idealism; hedid not fight for ideas. It was of the spiritual order; he fought forthe spirit. 

Imagine Don Quixote turning his heart to religious speculation--as hehimself once dreamed of doing when he met those images in bas-reliefwhich certain peasants were carrying to set up in the retablo of theirvillage church[65]--imagine Don Quixote given up to meditation uponeternal truths, and see him ascending Mount Carmel in the middle of thedark night of the soul, to watch from its summit the rising of that sunwhich never sets, and, like the eagle that was St. John's companion inthe isle of Patmos, to gaze upon it face to face and scrutinize itsspots. He leaves to Athena's owl--the goddess with the glaucous, orowl-like, eyes, who sees in the dark but who is dazzled by the light ofnoon--he leaves to the owl that accompanied Athena in Olympus the taskof searching with keen eyes in the shadows for the prey wherewith tofeed its young. 

And the speculative or meditative Quixotism is, like the practicalQuixotism, madness, a daughter-madness to the madness of the Cross. Andtherefore it is despised by the reason. At bottom, philosophy abhorsChristianity, and well did the gentle Marcus Aurelius prove it. 

The tragedy of Christ, the divine tragedy, is the tragedy of the Cross. Pilate, the sceptic, the man of culture, by making a mockery of it, sought to convert it into a comedy; he conceived the farcical idea ofthe king with the reed sceptre and crown of thorns, and cried "Beholdthe man!" But the people, more human than he, the people that thirstsfor tragedy, shouted, "Crucify him! crucify him!" And the human, theintra-human, tragedy is the tragedy of Don Quixote, whose face wasdaubed with soap in order that he might make sport for the servants ofthe dukes and for the dukes themselves, as servile as their servants. "Behold the madman!" they would have said. And the comic, theirrational, tragedy is the tragedy of suffering caused by ridicule andcontempt. 

The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how tomake oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule. 

I have already spoken of the forceful sonnets of that tragic Portuguese, Antero de Quental, who died by his own hand. Feeling acutely for theplight of his country on the occasion of the British ultimatum in 1890, he wrote as follows:[66] "An English statesman of the last century, whowas also undoubtedly a perspicacious observer and a philosopher, HoraceWalpole, said that for those who feel, life is a tragedy, and a comedyfor those who think. Very well, then, if we are destined to endtragically, we Portuguese, we who _feel_, we would far rather preferthis terrible, but noble, destiny, to that which is reserved, andperhaps at no very remote future date, for England, the country that_thinks_ and _calculates_, whose destiny it is to finish miserably andcomically. " We may leave on one side the assertion that the English area thinking and calculating people, implying thereby their lack offeeling, the injustice of which is explained by the occasion whichprovoked it, and also the assertion that the Portuguese feel, implyingthat they do not think or calculate--for we twin-brothers of theAtlantic seaboard have always been distinguished by a certain pedantryof feeling; but there remains a basis of truth underlying this terribleidea--namely, that some peoples, those who put thought above feeling, Ishould say reason above faith, die comically, while those die tragicallywho put faith above reason. For the mockers are those who die comically, and God laughs at their comic ending, while the nobler part, the part oftragedy, is theirs who endured the mockery. 

The mockery that underlies the career of Don Quixote is what we mustendeavour to discover. 

And shall we be told yet again that there has never been any Spanishphilosophy in the technical sense of the word? I will answer by asking, What is this sense? What does philosophy mean? Windelband, the historianof philosophy, in his essay on the meaning of philosophy (_Was istPhilosophie_? in the first volume of his _Präludien_) tells us that "thehistory of the word 'philosophy' is the history of the culturalsignificance of science. " He continues: "When scientific thought attainsan independent existence as a desire for knowledge for the sake ofknowledge, it takes the name of philosophy; when subsequently knowledgeas a whole divides into its various branches, philosophy is the generalknowledge of the world that embraces all other knowledge. As soon asscientific thought stoops again to becoming a means to ethics orreligious contemplation, philosophy is transformed into an art of lifeor into a formulation of religious beliefs. And when afterwards thescientific life regains its liberty, philosophy acquires once again itscharacter as an independent knowledge of the world, and in so far as itabandons the attempt to solve this problem, it is changed into a theoryof knowledge itself. " Here you have a brief recapitulation of thehistory of philosophy from Thales to Kant, including the medievalscholasticism upon which it endeavoured to establish religious beliefs. But has philosophy no other office to perform, and may not its office beto reflect upon the tragic sense of life itself, such as we have beenstudying it, to formulate this conflict between reason and faith, between science and religion, and deliberately to perpetuate thisconflict?

Later on Windelband says: "By philosophy in the systematic, not in thehistorical, sense, I understand the critical knowledge of values ofuniversal validity (_allgemeingiltigen Werten_). " But what values arethere of more universal validity than that of the human will seekingbefore all else the personal, individual, and concrete immortality ofthe soul--or, in other words, the human finality of the Universe--andthat of the human reason denying the rationality and even thepossibility of this desire? What values are there of more universalvalidity than the rational or mathematical value and the volitional orteleological value of the Universe in conflict with one another?

For Windelband, as for Kantians and neo-Kantians in general, there areonly three normative categories, three universal norms--those of thetrue or the false, the beautiful or the ugly, and the morally good orevil. Philosophy is reduced to logics, esthetics, and ethics, accordingly as it studies science, art, or morality. Another categoryremains excluded--namely, that of the pleasing and the unpleasing, orthe agreeable and the disagreeable: in other words, the hedonic. Thehedonic cannot, according to them, pretend to universal validity, itcannot be normative. "Whosoever throws upon philosophy, " wroteWindelband, "the burden of deciding the question of optimism andpessimism, whosoever demands that philosophy should pronounce judgementon the question as to whether the world is more adapted to produce painthan pleasure, or _vice versa_--such a one, if his attitude is notmerely that of a dilettante, sets himself the fantastic task of findingan absolute determination in a region in which no reasonable man hasever looked for one. " It remains to be seen, nevertheless, whether thisis as clear as it seems, in the case of a man like myself, who am at thesame time reasonable and yet nothing but a dilettante, which of coursewould be the abomination of desolation. 

It was with a very profound insight that Benedetto Croce, in hisphilosophy of the spirit in relation to esthetics as the science ofexpression and to logic as the science of pure concept, dividedpractical philosophy into two branches--economics and ethics. Herecognizes, in effect, the existence of a practical grade of spirit, purely economical, directed towards the singular and unconcerned withthe universal. Its types of perfection, of economic genius, are Iago andNapoleon, and this grade remains outside morality. And every man passesthrough this grade, because before all else he must wish to be himself, as an individual, and without this grade morality would be inexplicable, just as without esthetics logic would lack meaning. And the discovery ofthe normative value of the economic grade, which seeks the hedonic, wasnot unnaturally the work of an Italian, a disciple of Machiavelli, whospeculated so fearlessly with regard to _virtù_, practical efficiency, which is not exactly the same as moral virtue. 

But at bottom this economic grade is but the rudimentary state of thereligious grade. The religious is the transcendental economic orhedonic. Religion is a transcendental economy and hedonistic. That whichman seeks in religion, in religious faith, is to save his ownindividuality, to eternalize it, which he achieves neither by science, nor by art, nor by ethics. God is a necessity neither for science, norart, nor ethics; what necessitates God is religion. And with an insightthat amounts to genius our Jesuits speak of the grand business of oursalvation. Business--yes, business; something belonging to the economic, hedonistic order, although transcendental. We do not need God in orderthat He may teach us the truth of things, or the beauty of them, or inorder that He may safeguard morality by means of a system of penaltiesand punishments, but in order that He may save us, in order that He maynot let us die utterly. And because this unique longing is the longingof each and every normal man--those who are abnormal by reason of theirbarbarism or their hyperculture may be left out of the reckoning--it isuniversal and normative. 

Religion, therefore, is a transcendental economy, or, if you like, metaphysic. Together with its logical, esthetic, and ethical values, theUniverse has for man an economic value also, which, when thus madeuniversal and normative, is the religious value. We are not concernedonly with truth, beauty, and goodness: we are concerned also and aboveall with the salvation of the individual, with perpetuation, which thosenorms do not secure for us. That science of economy which is calledpolitical teaches us the most adequate, the most economical way ofsatisfying our needs, whether these needs are rational or irrational, beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral--a business economically good may bea swindle, something that in the long run kills the soul--and thesupreme human _need_ is the need of not dying, the need of enjoying forever the plenitude of our own individual limitation. And if the Catholiceucharistic doctrine teaches that the substance of the body of JesusChrist is present whole and entire in the consecrated Host, and in eachpart of it, this means that God is wholly and entirely in the wholeUniverse and also in each one of the individuals that compose it. Andthis is, fundamentally, not a logical, nor an esthetic, nor an ethicalprinciple, but a transcendental economic or religious principle. Andwith this norm, philosophy is able to judge of optimism and pessimism. _If the human soul is immortal, the world is economically orhedonistically good; if not, it is bad_. And the meaning which pessimismand optimism give to the categories of good and evil is not an ethicalsense, but an economic or hedonistic sense. Good is that which satisfiesour vital longing and evil is that which does not satisfy it. 

Philosophy, therefore, is also the science of the tragedy of life, areflection upon the tragic sense of it. An essay in this philosophy, with its inevitable internal contradictions and antinomies, is what Ihave attempted in these essays. And the reader must not overlook thefact that I have been operating upon myself; that this work partakes ofthe nature of a piece of self-surgery, and without any other anestheticthan that of the work itself. The enjoyment of operating upon myself hasennobled the pain of being operated upon. 

And as for my other claim--the claim that this is a Spanish philosophy, perhaps _the_ Spanish philosophy, that if it was an Italian whodiscovered the normative and universal value of the economic grade, itis a Spaniard who announces that this grade is merely the beginning ofthe religious grade, and that the essence of our religion, of ourSpanish Catholicism, consists precisely in its being neither a science, nor an art, nor an ethic, but an economy of things eternal--that is tosay, of things divine: as for this claim that all this is Spanish, Imust leave the task of substantiating it to another and an historicalwork. But leaving aside the external and written tradition, that whichcan be demonstrated by reference to historical documents, is there notsome present justification of this claim in the fact that I am aSpaniard--and a Spaniard who has scarcely ever been outside Spain; aproduct, therefore, of the Spanish tradition of the living tradition, ofthe tradition which is transmitted in feelings and ideas that dream, andnot in texts that sleep?

The philosophy in the soul of my people appears to me as the expressionof an inward tragedy analogous to the tragedy of the soul of DonQuixote, as the expression of a conflict between what the world is asscientific reason shows it to be, and what we wish that it might be, asour religious faith affirms it to be. And in this philosophy is to befound the explanation of what is usually said about us--namely, that weare fundamentally irreducible to _Kultur_--or, in other words, that werefuse to submit to it. No, Don Quixote does not resign himself eitherto the world, or to science or logic, or to art or esthetics, or tomorality or ethics. 

"And the upshot of all this, " so I have been told more than once and bymore than one person, "will be simply that all you will succeed in doingwill be to drive people to the wildest Catholicism. " And I have beenaccused of being a reactionary and even a Jesuit. Be it so! And whatthen?

Yes, I know, I know very well, that it is madness to seek to turn thewaters of the river back to their source, and that it is only theignorant who seek to find in the past a remedy for their present ills;but I know too that everyone who fights for any ideal whatever, althoughhis ideal may seem to lie in the past, is driving the world on to thefuture, and that the only reactionaries are those who find themselves athome in the present. Every supposed restoration of the past is acreation of the future, and if the past which it is sought to restore isa dream, something imperfectly known, so much the better. The march, asever, is towards the future, and he who marches is getting there, eventhough he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not thebetter way!. . . 

I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that thesoul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through theRenaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution--learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving thespiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the DarkAges. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the strugglebetween the Middle Ages and the Renaissance which was the offspring ofthe Middle Ages. 

And if some accuse me of subserving the cause of Catholic reaction, others perhaps, the official Catholics. . . . But these, in Spain, troublethemselves little about anything, and are interested only in their ownquarrels and dissensions. And besides, poor folk, they have neither eyesnor ears!

But the truth is that my work--I was going to say my mission--is toshatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith inaffirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention from faith, andthis for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against allthose who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or toagnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude andpassionate desire. 

Will this work be efficacious? But did Don Quixote believe in theimmediate apparential efficacy of his work? It is very doubtful, and atany rate he did not by any chance put his visor to the test by slashingit a second time. And many passages in his history show that he did notlook with much confidence to the immediate success of his design torestore knight-errantry. And what did it matter to him so long as thushe lived and immortalized himself? And he must have surmised, and did infact surmise, that his work would have another and higher efficacy, andthat was that it would ferment in the minds of all those who in a piousspirit read of his exploits. 

Don Quixote made himself ridiculous; but did he know the most tragicridicule of all, the inward ridicule, the ridiculousness of a man's selfto himself, in the eyes of his own soul? Imagine Don Quixote'sbattlefield to be his own soul; imagine him to be fighting in his soulto save the Middle Ages from the Renaissance, to preserve the treasureof his infancy; imagine him an inward Don Quixote, with a Sancho, at hisside, inward and heroical too--and tell me if you find anything comic inthe tragedy. 

And what has Don Quixote left, do you ask? I answer, he has lefthimself, and a man, a living and eternal man, is worth all theories andall philosophies. Other peoples have left chiefly institutions, books;we have left souls; St. Teresa is worth any institution, any _Critiqueof Pure Reason_. 

But Don Quixote was converted. Yes--and died, poor soul. But the other, the real Don Quixote, he who remained on earth and lives amongst us, animating us with his spirit--this Don Quixote was not converted, thisDon Quixote continues to incite us to make ourselves ridiculous, thisDon Quixote must never die. And the conversion of the other DonQuixote--he who was converted only to die--was possible because he wasmad, and it was his madness, and not his death nor his conversion thatimmortalized him, earning him forgiveness for the crime of having beenborn. [67] _Felix culpa!_ And neither was his madness cured, but onlytransformed. His death was his last knightly adventure; in dying hestormed heaven, which suffereth violence. 

This mortal Don Quixote died and descended into hell, which he enteredlance on rest, and freed all the condemned, as he had freed the galleyslaves, and he shut the gates of hell, and tore down the scroll thatDante saw there and replaced it by one on which was written "Long livehope!" and escorted by those whom he had freed, and they laughing athim, he went to heaven. And God laughed paternally at him, and thisdivine laughter filled his soul with eternal happiness. 

And the other Don Quixote remained here amongst us, fighting withdesperation. And does he not fight out of despair? How is it that amongthe words that English has borrowed from our language, such as _siesta, camarilla, guerrilla_, there is to be found this word _desperdo_? Is notthis inward Don Quixote that I spoke of, conscious of his own tragiccomicness, a man of despair (_desesperado_). A _desperado_--yes, likePizarro and like Loyola. But "despair is the master of impossibilities, "as we learn from Salazar y Torres (_Elegir al enemigo_, Act I. ), and itis despair and despair alone that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, madhope. _Spero quia absurdum_, it ought to have been said, rather than_credo_. 

And Don Quixote, who lived in solitude, sought more solitude still; hesought the solitudes of the Peña Pobre, in order that there, alone, without witnesses, he might give himself up to greater follies withwhich to assuage his soul. But he was not quite alone, for Sanchoaccompanied him--Sancho the good, Sancho the believing, Sancho thesimple. If, as some say, in Spain Don Quixote is dead and Sancho lives, then we are saved, for Sancho, his master dead, will become aknight-errant himself. And at any rate he is waiting for some other madknight to follow again. 

And there is also a tragedy of Sancho. The other Sancho, the Sancho whojourneyed with the mortal Don Quixote--it is not certain that he died, although some think that he died hopelessly mad, calling for his lanceand believing in the truth of all those things which his dying andconverted master had denounced and abominated as lies. But neither is itcertain that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, or the curate, or the barber, or the dukes and canons are dead, and it is with these that theheroical Sancho has to contend. 

Don Quixote journeyed alone, alone with Sancho, alone with his solitude. And shall we not also journey alone, we his lovers, creating forourselves a Quixotesque Spain which only exists in our imagination?

And again we shall be asked: What has Don Quixote bequeathed to_Kultur_? I answer: Quixotism, and that is no little thing! It is awhole method, a whole epistemology, a whole esthetic, a whole logic, awhole ethic--above all, a whole religion--that is to say, a wholeeconomy of things eternal and things divine, a whole hope in what isrationally absurd. 

For what did Don Quixote fight? For Dulcinea, for glory, for life, forsurvival. Not for Iseult, who is the eternal flesh; not for Beatrice, who is theology; not for Margaret, who is the people; not for Helen, whois culture. He fought for Dulcinea, and he won her, for he lives. 

And the greatest thing about him was his having been mocked andvanquished, for it was in being overcome that he overcame; he overcamethe world by giving the world cause to laugh at him. 

And to-day? To-day he feels his own comicness and the vanity of hisendeavours so far as their temporal results are concerned; he seeshimself from without--culture has taught him to objectify himself, toalienate himself from himself instead of entering into himself--and inseeing himself from without he laughs at himself, but with a bitterlaughter. Perhaps the most tragic character would be that of a Margutteof the inner man, who, like the Margutte of Pulci, should die oflaughter, but of laughter at himself. _E riderá in eterno_, he willlaugh for all eternity, said the Angel Gabriel of Margutte. Do you nothear the laughter of God?

The mortal Don Quixote, in dying, realized his own comicness and bewepthis sins; but the immortal Quixote, realizing his own comicness, superimposes himself upon it and triumphs over it without renouncing it. 

And Don Quixote does not surrender, because he is not a pessimist, andhe fights on. He is not a pessimist, because pessimism is begotten byvanity, it is a matter of fashion, pure intellectual snobbism, and DonQuixote is neither vain nor modern with any sort of modernity (stillless is he a modernist), and he does not understand the meaning of theword "snob" unless it be explained to him in old Christian Spanish. DonQuixote is not a pessimist, for since he does not understand what ismeant by the _joie de vivre_ he does not understand its opposite. Neither does he understand futurist fooleries. In spite ofClavileño, [68] he has not got as far as the aeroplane, which seems totend to put not a few fools at a still greater distance from heaven. DonQuixote has not arrived at the age of the tedium of life, a conditionthat not infrequently takes the form of that topophobia socharacteristic of many modern spirits, who pass their lives running attop speed from one place to another, not from any love of the place towhich they are going, but from hatred of the place they are leavingbehind, and so flying from all places: which is one of the forms ofdespair. 

But Don Quixote hears his own laughter, he hears the divine laughter, and since he is not a pessimist, since he believes in life eternal, hehas to fight, attacking the modern, scientific, inquisitorial orthodoxyin order to bring in a new and impossible Middle Age, dualistic, contradictory, passionate. Like a new Savonarola, an Italian Quixote ofthe end of the fifteenth century, he fights against this Modern Age thatbegan with Machiavelli and that will end comically. He fights againstthe rationalism inherited from the eighteenth century. Peace of mind, reconciliation between reason and faith--this, thanks to the providenceof God, is no longer possible. The world must be as Don Quixote wishesit to be, and inns must be castles, and he will fight with it and will, to all appearances, be vanquished, but he will triumph by making himselfridiculous. And he will triumph by laughing at himself and makinghimself the object of his own laughter. 

"Reason speaks and feeling bites" said Petrarch; but reason also bitesand bites in the inmost heart. And more light does not make more warmth. "Light, light, more light!" they tell us that the dying Goethe cried. No, warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we die of cold and not of darkness. It is not the night kills, but the frost. We must liberate the enchantedprincess and destroy the stage of Master Peter. [69]

But God! may there not be pedantry too in thinking ourselves the objectsof mockery and in making Don Quixotes of ourselves? Kierkegaard saidthat the regenerate (_Opvakte_) desire that the wicked world should mockat them for the better assurance of their own regeneracy, for theenjoyment of being able to bemoan the wickedness of the world(_Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, ii. , Afsnit ii. , cap. 4, sect. 2, b). 

The question is, how to avoid the one or the other pedantry, or the oneor the other affectation, if the natural man is only a myth and we areall artificial. 

Romanticism! Yes, perhaps that is partly the word. And there is anadvantage in its very lack of precision. Against romanticism the forcesof rationalist and classicist pedantry, especially in France, havelatterly been unchained. Romanticism itself is merely another form ofpedantry, the pedantry of sentiment? Perhaps. In this world a man ofculture is either a dilettante or a pedant: you have to take yourchoice. Yes, René and Adolphe and Obermann and Lara, perhaps they wereall pedants. . . . The question is to seek consolation in disconsolation. 

The philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration, essentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a_demi-mondaine_ philosophy. Leave out the _demi_; call it _mondaine_, mundane. Mundane--yes, a philosophy for the world and not forphilosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. Theworld desires illusion (_mundus vult decipi_)--either the illusionantecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent toreason, which is religion. And Machiavelli has said that whosoeverwishes to delude will always find someone willing to be deluded. Blessedare they who are easily befooled! A Frenchman, Jules de Gaultier, saidthat it was the privilege of his countrymen _n'être pas dupe_--not to betaken in. A sorry privilege!

Science does not give Don Quixote what he demands of it. "Then let himnot make the demand, " it will be said, "let him resign himself, let himaccept life and truth as they are. " But he does not accept them as theyare, and he asks for signs, urged thereto by Sancho, who stands by hisside. And it is not that Don Quixote does not understand what thoseunderstand who talk thus to him, those who succeed in resigningthemselves and accepting rational life and rational truth. No, it isthat the needs of his heart are greater. Pedantry? Who knows!. . . 

And in this critical century, Don Quixote, who has also contaminatedhimself with criticism, has to attack his own self, the victim ofintellectualism and of sentimentalism, and when he wishes to be mostspontaneous he appears to be most affected. And he wishes, unhappy man, to rationalize the irrational and irrationalize the rational. And hesinks into the despair of the critical century whose two greatestvictims were Nietzsche and Tolstoi. And through this despair he reachesthe heroic fury of which Giordano Bruno spoke--that intellectual DonQuixote who escaped from the cloister--and becomes an awakener ofsleeping souls (_dormitantium animorum excubitor_), as the ex-Dominicansaid of himself--he who wrote: "Heroic love is the property of thosesuperior natures who are called insane (_insano_) not because they donot know (_no sanno_), but because they over-know (_soprasanno_). "

But Bruno believed in the triumph of his doctrines; at any rate theinscription at the foot of his statue in the Campo dei Fiori, oppositethe Vatican, states that it has been dedicated to him by the age whichhe had foretold (_il secolo da lui divinato_). But our Don Quixote, theinward, the immortal Don Quixote, conscious of his own comicness, doesnot believe that his doctrines will triumph in this world, because theyare not of it. And it is better that they should not triumph. And if theworld wished to make Don Quixote king, he would retire alone to themountain, fleeing from the king-making and king-killing crowds, asChrist retired alone to the mountain when, after the miracle of theloaves and fishes, they sought to proclaim him king. He left the titleof king for the inscription written over the Cross. 

What, then, is the new mission of Don Quixote, to-day, in this world? Tocry aloud, to cry aloud in the wilderness. But though men hear not, thewilderness hears, and one day it will be transformed into a resoundingforest, and this solitary voice that goes scattering over the wildernesslike seed, will fructify into a gigantic cedar, which with its hundredthousand tongues will sing an eternal hosanna to the Lord of life and ofdeath. 

And now to you, the younger generation, bachelor Carrascos of aEuropeanizing regenerationism, you who are working after the bestEuropean fashion, with scientific method and criticism, to you I say:Create wealth, create nationality, create art, create science, createethics, above all create--or rather, translate--_Kultur_, and thus killin yourselves both life and death. Little will it all last you!. . . 

And with this I conclude--high time that I did!--for the present at anyrate, these essays on the tragic sense of life in men and in peoples, orat least in myself--who am a man--and in the soul of my people as it isreflected in mine. 

I hope, reader, that some time while our tragedy is still playing, insome interval between the acts, we shall meet again. And we shallrecognize one another. And forgive me if I have troubled you more thanwas needful and inevitable, more than I intended to do when I took up mypen proposing to distract you for a while from your distractions. Andmay God deny you peace, but give you glory!

SALAMANCA, _In the year of grace_ 1912. 

FOOTNOTES:

[59] "Que tal?" o "como va?" y es aquella que responde: "se vive!"

[60] Whenever I consider that I needs must die, I stretch my cloak uponthe ground and am not surfeited with sleeping. 

[61] No es consuelo de desdichas--es otra desdicha aparte--querer aquien las padece--persuadir que no son tales (_Gustos y diogustos no sonniés que imaginatión_, Act I. , Scene 4). 

[62] _Don Quijote_, part i. , chap, i. 

[63] Preface. 

[64] _El individualismo español_, in vol. Clxxi. , March 1, 1903. 

[65] See _El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha_, part ii. , chap. Lviii. , and the corresponding chapter in my _Vida de Don Quijote ySancho_. 

[66] In an article which was to have been published on the occasion ofthe ultimatum, and of which the original is in the possession of theConde do Ameal. This fragment appeared in the Portuguese review, _AAguía_ (No. 3), March, 1912. 

[67] An allusion to the phrase in Calderón's _La Vida es Sueño_, "Quedelito cometí contra vosotros naciendo?"--J. E. C. F. 

[68] The wooden horse upon which Don Quixote imagined that he and Sanchohad been carried in the air. See _Don Quijote_, part ii. , chaps. 40 and41. --J. E. C. F. 

[69] _Don Quijote_, part ii. , chap. 26. 

INDEX

Æschylus, 246Alexander of Aphrodisias, 88Amiel, 18, 68, 228Anaxagoras, 143Angelo of Foligno, 289Antero de Quintal, 240, 315Ardigo, Roberto, 238Aristotle, 1, 21, 80, 144, 165, 171, 232, 235Arnold, Matthew, 103Athanasius, 63-65Avenarius, Richard, 144, 310de Ayala, Ramón Pérez, 303

Bacon, 310Balfour, A. J. , 27Balmes, 84, 85Bergson, 144, 328Berkeley, Bishop, 87, 146Besant, Mrs. A. , 291Boccaccio, 52Böhme, Jacob, 227, 297Bonnefon, 250, 254Bossuet, 226, 231Brooks, Phillips, 76, 190Browning, Robert, 112, 181, 249, 254Brunetière, 103, 298Brunhes, B. , 235, 237, 238Bruno, 301, 329Büchner, 95Butler, Joseph, 5, 6, 87Byron, Lord, 94, 102, 103, 132

Calderón, 39, 268, 323Calvin, 121, 246Campanella, 301Carducci, 102, 306Carlyle, 231, 298Catherine of Sienna, 289Cauchy, 236Cervantes, 220, 306Channing, W. E. , 78Cicero, 165, 216, 221Clement of Alexandria, 32Cortés, Donoso, 74Costa, Joaquin, 309Cournot, 192, 217, 222, 306Cowper, 43Croce, Benedetto, 313, 318

Dante, 42, 51, 140, 223, 233, 256, 295Darwin, 72, 147Descartes, 34, 86, 107, 224, 237, 293, 310, 312Diderot, 99Diego de Estella, 304Dionysius the Areopagite, 160Domingo de Guzmán, 289Duns Scotus, 76

Eckhart, 289Empedocles, 61Erasmus, 112, 301Erigena, 160, 167

Fénelon, 224Fichte, 8, 29Flaubert, 94, 219Fouillée, 261Fourier, 278Francesco de Sanctis, 220Francke, August, 120Franklin, 248

Galileo, 72, 267, 302Ganivet, Angel, 313de Gaultier, Jules, 328Goethe, 218, 264, 288, 299, 309Gounod, 56Gratry, Père, 236

Haeckel, 95Harnack, 59, 64, 65, 69, 75Hartmann, 146Hegel, 5, 111, 170, 294, 309, 310Heraclitus, 165Hermann, 69, 70, 77, 165, 217Herodotus, 140Hippocrates, 143Hodgson, S. H. , 30Holberg, 109Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 257, 311Hume, David, 79, 86, 104, 310Hume, Martin A. S. , 312Huntingdon, A. M. , 298

James, William, 5, 81, 86Jansen, 121Juan de los Angeles, 1, 207, 286Juan de la Cruz, 67, 289, 293Justin Martyr, 63

Kaftan, 68, 222Kant, Immanuel, 3, 4, 11, 13, 67, 68, 73, 79, 114, 143, 166, 294, 310, 311, 317à Kempis, 51, 99, 277Kierkegaard, 3, 109, 115, 123, 153, 178, 198, 257, 287, 327Krause, 294

Lactantius, 59, 74, 165, 169Lamarck, 147Lamennais, 74, 117, 165, 246Laplace, 161Leibnitz, 247Leo XIII. , 75Leopardi, 44, 47, 123, 132, 240, 248Le Roy, 73Lessing, 229Linnæus, 1Loisy, 72Loyola, 122, 307, 314, 324Loyson, Hyacinthe, 116Lucretius, 94, 102Luis de León, 289Luther, 3, 121, 270, 294, 301

Mach, Dr. E. , 114Machado, Antonio, 241Machiavelli, 296, 326, 328de Maistre, Count Joseph, 74, 305Malebranche, 63Malón de Chaide, 66Manrique, Jorge, 309Marcus Aurelius, 315Marlowe, Christopher, 299Martins, Oliveira, 68Mazzini, 153Melanchthon, 69Menéndez de Pelayo, 313Michelet, 45Miguel de Molinos, 216, 219, 228Mill, Stuart, 104, 310Milton, 284Moser, Johann Jacob, 252, 263Myers, W. H. , 88

Nietzsche, 50, 61, 100, 231, 239, 328Nimesius, 59

Obermann, 11, 47, 259, 263, 268Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph, 252, 253Ordóñez de Lara, 56Origen, 245

Papini, 238Pascal, 40, 45, 74, 262, 263Petrarch, 327Pfleiderer, 61Pius IX. , 72Pizarro, 324Plato, 38, 45, 48, 61, 90, 125, 143, 216, 217, 221, 292, 310Pliny, 165Plotinus, 209, 230, 243Pohle, Joseph, 77Pomponazzi, Pietro, 88

Renan, 51, 68Ritschl, Albrecht, 68, 114, 121, 167, 238, 253, 263, 294Robertson, F. W. , 180Robespierre, 41Rohde, Erwin, 60, 61Rousseau, 53, 263, 299, 310Ruysbroek, 289

Saint Augustine, 74, 192, 247Saint Bonaventura, 220Saint Francis of Assissi, 52, 210Saint Paul, 48, 49, 62, 94, 112, 188, 209, 225, 241, 253, 255, 270Saint Teresa, 67, 75, 210, 226, 228, 289, 323Saint Thomas Aquinas, 83, 92, 233Salazar y Torres, 324Schleiermacher, 89, 156, 217Schopenhauer, 146, 147, 247Seeberg, Reinold, 188Sénancour, 43, 47, 260, 263, 299Seneca, 231, 313Seuse, Heinrich, 75, 289Shakespeare, 39Socrates, 29, 143, 145Solon, 17Soloviev, 95Spencer, Herbert, 89, 124, 238, 253Spener, 253Spinoza, Benedict, 6, 7, 22, 24, 31, 38, 40, 89, 97-99, 101, 208, 234, 310Stanley, Dean, 91Stendhal, 311Stirmer, Max, 29Suárez, 312Swedenborg, 153, 221, 225

Tacitus, 56, 94, 142, 216, 306Tauler, 289Tennyson, Lord, 33, 103Tertullian, 74, 94, 104Thales of Miletus, 143, 317Thomé de Jesús, 283Tolstoi, 328Troeltsch, Ernst, 70, 112

Velasquez, 70Vico, Giovanni Baptista, 142, 143Vinet, A. , 93, 113, 160Virchow, 95Virgil, 249Vives, Luis, 313Vogt, 95

Walpole, Horace, 315Weizsäcker, 62, 77Wells, H. G. , 265Whitman, Walt, 125Windelband, 267, 316, 317

Xenophon, 29, 143