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Unamuno, Miguel de, 1864-1936

"Tragic Sense Of Life"

"
The anti-theological hate, the scientificist--I do not say
scientific--fury, is manifest. Consider, not the more detached
scientific investigators, those who know how to doubt, but the fanatics
of rationalism, and observe with what gross brutality they speak of
faith. Vogt considered it probable that the cranial structure of the
Apostles was of a pronounced simian character; of the indecencies of
Haeckel, that supreme incomprehender, there is no need to speak, nor yet
of those of Buechner; even Virchow is not free from them. And others work
with more subtilty. There are people who seem not to be content with
not believing that there is another life, or rather, with believing that
there is none, but who are vexed and hurt that others should believe in
it or even should wish that it might exist. And this attitude is as
contemptible as that is worthy of respect which characterizes those who,
though urged by the need they have of it to believe in another life, are
unable to believe. But of this most noble attitude of the spirit, the
most profound, the most human, and the most fruitful, the attitude of
despair, we will speak later on.
And the rationalists who do not succumb to the anti-theological fury are
bent on convincing men that there are motives for living and
consolations for having been born, even though there shall come a time,
at the end of some tens or hundreds or millions of centuries, when all
human consciousness shall have ceased to exist.


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