But when we have overcome the first, the only real difficulty, when we
have overcome the impediment of reason, when we have achieved the faith,
however painful and involved in uncertainty it may be, that our personal
consciousness shall continue after death, what difficulty, what
impediment, lies in the way of our imagining to ourselves this
persistence of self in harmony with our desire? Yes, we can imagine it
as an eternal rejuvenescence, as an eternal growth of ourselves, and as
a journeying towards God, towards the Universal Consciousness, without
ever an arrival, we can imagine it as ... But who shall put fetters upon
the imagination, once it has broken the chain of the rational?
I know that all this is dull reading, tiresome, perhaps tedious, but it
is all necessary. And I must repeat once again that we have nothing to
do with a transcendental police system or with the conversion of God
into a great Judge or Policeman--that is to say, we are not concerned
with heaven or hell considered as buttresses to shore up our poor
earthly morality, nor are we concerned with anything egoistic or
personal. It is not I myself alone, it is the whole human race that is
involved, it is the ultimate finality of all our civilization. I am but
one, but all men are I's.
Do you remember the end of that _Song of the Wild Cock_ which Leopardi
wrote in prose?--the despairing Leopardi, the victim of reason, who
never succeeded in achieving belief.
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