All this talk of a man surviving in his children, or in his works, or in
the universal consciousness, is but vague verbiage which satisfies only
those who suffer from affective stupidity, and who, for the rest, may be
persons of a certain cerebral distinction. For it is possible to possess
great talent, or what we call great talent, and yet to be stupid as
regards the feelings and even morally imbecile. There have been
instances.
These clever-witted, affectively stupid persons are wont to say that it
is useless to seek to delve in the unknowable or to kick against the
pricks. It is as if one should say to a man whose leg has had to be
amputated that it does not help him at all to think about it. And we all
lack something; only some of us feel the lack and others do not. Or they
pretend 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 answered
him, "Precisely for that reason--because it does not avail." It is
manifest that weeping avails something, even if only the alleviation of
distress; but the deep sense of Solon's reply to the impertinent
questioner is plainly seen. And I am convinced that we should solve many
things if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs,
which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joined
together in beweeping them and crying aloud to the heavens and calling
upon God.
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