Tragic Sense Of Life

ay be able to say that what follows is not philosophy but rhetoric. Moreover, the divine Plato, when he dis

, and that this endeavour is its actual essence, and implies indefinite time, and that the soul, in fine, sometimes with a clear and distinct idea

hilation. Try, reader, to imagine to yourself, when you are wide awake, the condition of your soul when you are in a deep sleep; try to fill your consciousness with the represent

e. More, more, and always more! I want to be myself, and yet without ceasing to be myself to be others as well, to merge myself into the totality of things visible and invisible, to extend myself into the illimitable of space and t

aid of Marcius "He wants nothing of a god but eternity"? Eternity, eternity!-that is the supreme desire! The thirst of eternity is

shadow," σκια? οναρ, to Calderón's "life is a dream" and Shakespeare's "we are such stuff as dreams are made on," this last a yet more tragic sentence than Calderón's, for w

the vanity of the passing world kindles love in us, the only thing that triumphs over the vain and transitory, the only thing that fills life again and eternalizes it. In appearance at any rate, for in reality ... A

lips to the spring, of the fountain of life, of those who have t

being, thirst of being more! hunger of God! thirst of l

f in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable," wrote the Apostle (1 Cor. xv. 19);

e after death is the very palpitation of my consciousness. When I contemplate the green serenity of the fields or look into the depths of clear eyes through which shines a fellow-soul, my consciousness dilates, I feel the diastole of the soul and am bathed in the flood

"in a matter that touches themselves, their eternity, their all, exasperates me rather than moves me to compassion, as

them over to the neglect of teeming mother earth; he is an animal that guards its dead. And from what does he thus guard them? From what does he so futilely protect them? The wretched consciousness shrinks from its own annihilation, and, just as an animal spirit, newly severed from the w

raised for the dead, and stone was used for sepulchres before it was used for houses. It is the strong-builded houses of t

on, Robespierre induced the Convention to declare the existence of the Supreme Being and "the consolatory principle of th

be, like life itself to which it is thrall, and perhaps the only health possible may be death; but this disease is the fount of all vigorous health. From the depth of this

immo a rived

you-all things becoming dumb and soundless, enveloping you in silence-the objects that you handle crumbling away between your hands-the ground slipping from under your feet-your very memory vanishing as if

extreme unction, he refused to open his right hand, which clutched a few dirty coins, not considering that very soon neither his han

he near approach of a violent death, he proposed to concentrate his life and spend the

o the absolute unconsciousness from which it sprang, and if a like fate befalls all my brothers in humanity, then is our toil-worn human r

that suggested in th

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inching, to fasten our gaze upon the gaze of the Sphinx, fo

e Wherefore of the Sphinx; it is the Wherefore that corrodes the marrow of

ines written under the oppression of delirium, in which, believ

ford my miser

nd I must confess, painful though the confession be, that in the days of the simple faith of my childhood, descriptions of the tortures of hell, however terrible, never made me tremble, for I always felt that nothingness was much more terrifying. He who suffers lives, and he who lives suffering, even though over the portal of his abode is written "Abandon all

it is true that I am to die utterly," we say to ourselves, "then once I am annihilated the world has ended so far as I am concerned-it is finished. Why, then, should it not end forthwith, so that no new consciousnesses, doomed to suffer the tormenting illusion of a transient and apparential existence, may come into being? If, the i

lation, having lost the ultimate illusi

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imultaneously a languid and weary desire to die is felt in the breast." The greater part of those who seek death at their own hand are moved thereto by love; it is th

, the serene Plato-but was he serene?-spoke of the uncertainty of our dream of being immortal and of the risk that the dream might be vain, and from his own soul there escaped this profoun

ion upon me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it is not with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die-no; I neither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to

is nothing more universal than the individual, for what is the property of each is the property of all. Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to each. That which we c

and they in their turn will sacrifice themselves to their children, and these children to theirs, and so it will go on without end, a sterile sacrifice by which nobody profits. I came into the world to

d all is mine, and mine the totality of things. As mine I love the All, and I love my neighbour

ke of quietude, the storm of the heart appeased and stilled the echoes of the world! Insatiable desire now sleeps and does not even dream

retend to console us with this! Futile consolation! It is not my matter or my energy that is the cause of my disquiet, for they are not mine if I myself am not mine-that is, if I am not eternal. No, my longing is not to be submerged in the vast All, in an infinite a

f having to tear myself away from everything sensible and material, from all substance. Yes, perhaps this merits the name of materialism; and if I grapple myself to God with all my powers and all my senses, it is

eply, In virtue of what do we now live? "Wherefore?"-and wherefore do we now exist? "By what right?"-and by what right are we? To exist is just as gratuitous as to go on existing for ever. Do not let us talk of merit

on of the desire for immortality; but to condemn this desire on the ground that we believe it to have been proved to be unattainable, without undertaking the proof, is merely supine. I am dreaming ...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of t

gs which it is imp

ess of the risk of immortality; and there Paul disputed with Epicureans and Stoics. And some said of him, "What doth this babbler (σπερμολογο?) 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 fol

s of Athens, and all listen to him, agog to hear the latest novelty. But when he begins to speak to them of the resurrection of the dead their stock of patience and tolerance comes to an end, and some mock him, and others say: "We will hear thee again of this matter!" intending not to hear him. And a similar thing happened to him at C?sarea when he came before the Roman pr?tor Felix, likewise a broad-minded and cultured man, who mitigated the hardships of his imprisonme

mly and smilingly, and at times they encourage you, saying: "That's strange!" 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 one think!" But as soon as you speak to them of resurrecti

an that of others much more absurd? Why this manifest hostility to such a

let us want to be so; let us submit ourselves to reason without tormenting ourselves about what is irremediable, and so making life more gloomy and miserable. This obsession, they add, is a disease. Disease, madness, reason ... the everlasting refrain! Very well then-No! I do not submit to reason, and I rebel

rist, he blasphemed against Christ. Bursting with his own self, he wished himself unending and dreamed his theory of eternal recurrence, a sorry counterfeit of immortality, and, full of pity for himself, he abominated all pity. And there are some who say that his is the philosophy of strong men! No, it is not. My health and my strength urge me to perpetuate myself.

as a diversion, and he says to himself with Renan that this universe is a spectacle that God presents to Himself, and that it behoves us to carry out the intentions of the great Stage-Manager and contribut

he despises fame is a lying rascal. Of Dante, the author of those three-and-thirty vigorous verses (Purg. xi. 85-117) on the vanity of worldly glory, Boccaccio says that he relished honours and pomps more perhaps than suited with his conspicuous virtue. The keenest desire of his condemned souls is that they may be remembered and talked of here on earth, and this is the chief solace that lightens the darkness of his Inferno. And he himself confessed that his aim in expounding the concept of Monarchy was not merely that

tality. And hence this tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survive in some way in the memory of others and of posterity. It is this struggle, a thousand times more terrible than the st

hers. Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weaknesses and his misfortunes, for want of anyt

ss of the cause itself. A rabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world and characterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with genius than hit the mark with the crowd. Rousseau has said in his émile (book iv.): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. There is not a single one of them who, if he came to know the true and the false, would not prefer the falsehood that he had fo

it. And so we rise up in revolt against them, and hence the bitterness with which all those who seek after fame in the world of letters judge those who have already attained it and are in enjoyment of it. If additions continue to be made to the wealth of literature, there will come a day of sifting, and each one fears lest he be caught in the meshes of the sieve. In attacking the masters, irreverent youth is only defending itself; the iconoclast or image-breaker is a Stylite who erects himself as an image, an icon. "Comparisons are odious," says the familiar adage, and the reason is that w

en the name of a writer is no longer in men's mouths that he most influences his public, his mind being then disseminated and infused in the minds of those who have read him, whereas he was quoted chiefly when his thoughts and sayings, clashing with those generally received, needed the guarantee of a name. What was his now belongs to all, and he lives in all. But for him the garlands have faded, and he believes himself to have failed. He hears no more either the applause o

with which human history opened: the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. It was not a struggle for bread-it was a struggle to survive in God, in the divine memory. Envy is a thousand times more terrible than hunge

ed by Don Ordó?ez de Lara. "Courage, Girolamo, for you will long be remembered; death is bitter, but fame eternal!" cried Girolamo Olgiati, the disciple of Cola Montano and the murderer, together with his fellow-consp

for immortality, if not for substantial and concrete immort

the statue lies broken at the foot of the pedestal without anyone heeding it; but those who win the hearts of the elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship in some shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but capable of preserving them from the flood of oblivion. The artist sacrifices the extensiveness of his fa

s us poor folk to seek money as the terror of poverty, just as it was not the desire for glory but the terror of hell that drove men in the Middle Ages to the cloister with its acedia. Neither is this wish to leave a name pride, but terror of extinctio

gs new life, and only by draining the lees of spiritual sorrow can we at last taste

se primordial end is to protect this faith in the personal immortality of the soul is Catholicism; but Catholicism has sought to rationalize this faith by converting religio

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my lot to die, I spread my cloak upon the

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