If
consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a
flash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing
more execrable than existence.
Some may espy a fundamental contradiction in everything that I am
saying, now expressing a longing for unending life, now affirming that
this earthly life does not possess the value that is given to it.
Contradiction? To be sure! The contradiction of my heart that says Yes
and of my head that says No! Of course there is contradiction. Who does
not recollect those words of the Gospel, "Lord, I believe, help thou my
unbelief"? Contradiction! Of course! Since we only live in and by
contradictions, since life is tragedy and the tragedy is perpetual
struggle, without victory or the hope of victory, life is contradiction.
The values we are discussing are, as you see, values of the heart, and
against values of the heart reasons do not avail. For reasons are only
reasons--that is to say, they are not even truths. There is a class of
pedantic label-mongers, pedants by nature and by grace, who remind me of
that man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly died
in the flower of his years, says to him, "Patience, my friend, we all
must die!" Would you think it strange if this father were offended at
such an impertinence? For it is an impertinence. There are times when
even an axiom can become an impertinence.
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