Because he
could not be Christ, 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. His is the doctrine of weaklings who
aspire to be strong, but not of the strong who are strong. Only the
feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire
for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for
perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance
of 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 console
himself for having been born. And now it occurs to him to take it 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 contribute to make the
spectacle the most brilliant and the most varied that may be. And they
have made a religion of art, a cure for the metaphysical evil, and
invented the meaningless phrase of art for art's sake.
And it does not suffice them.
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