The melancholy of the ancients seems to me more profound than
that of the moderns, who all more or less presuppose an immortality on
the yonder side of the _black hole_. But for the ancients this black
hole was the infinite itself; the procession of their dreams is imaged
against a background of immutable ebony. The gods being no more and
Christ being not yet, there was between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius a
unique moment in which man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find this
grandeur; but what renders Lucretius intolerable is his physics, which
he gives as if positive. If he is weak, it is because he did not doubt
enough; he wished to explain, to arrive at a conclusion!"[30]
Yes, Lucretius wished to arrive at a conclusion, a solution, and, what
is worse, he wished to find consolation in reason. For there is also an
anti-theological advocacy, and an _odium anti-theologicum_.
Many, very many, men of science, the majority of those who call
themselves rationalists, are afflicted by it.
The rationalist acts rationally--that is to say, he does not speak out
of his part--so long as he confines himself to denying that reason
satisfies our vital hunger for immortality; but, furious at not being
able to believe, he soon becomes a prey to the vindictiveness of the
_odium anti-theologicum_, and exclaims with the Pharisees: "This people
who knoweth not the law are cursed." There is much truth in these words
of Soloviev: "I have a foreboding of the near approach of a time when
Christians will gather together again in the Catacombs, because of the
persecution of the faith--a persecution less brutal, perhaps, than that
of Nero's day, but not less refined in its severity, consummated by
mendacity, derision, and all the hypocrisies.
Pages:
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166