And even if this belief be absurd, why is its exposition less tolerated
than that of others much more absurd? Why this manifest hostility to
such a belief? Is it fear? Is it, perhaps, spite provoked by inability
to 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 way
to folly and kicking against the pricks, for what cannot be is
impossible. 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 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 against it, and I persist in creating by the energy of faith my
immortalizing God, and in forcing by my will the stars out of their
courses, for if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed we should say to
that mountain, "Remove hence," and it would remove, and nothing would be
impossible to us (Matt. xvii. 20).
There you have that "thief of energies," as he[12] so obtusely called
Christ who sought to wed nihilism with the struggle for existence, and
he talks to you about courage. His heart craved the eternal all while
his head convinced him of nothingness, and, desperate and mad to defend
himself from himself, he cursed that which he most loved.
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