Anguish is that which makes consciousness return upon itself. He who
knows no anguish knows what he does and what he thinks, but he does not
truly know that he does it and that he thinks it. He thinks, but he does
not think that he thinks, and his thoughts are as if they were not his.
Neither does he properly belong to himself. For it is only anguish, it
is only the passionate longing never to die, that makes a human spirit
master of itself.
Pain, which is a kind of dissolution, makes us discover our internal
core; and in the supreme dissolution, which is death, we shall, at last,
through the pain of annihilation, arrive at the core of our temporal
core--at God, whom in our spiritual anguish we breathe and learn to
love.
Even so must we believe with faith, whatever counsels reason may give
us.
The origin of evil, as many discovered of old, is nothing other than
what is called by another name the inertia of matter, and, as applied to
the things of the spirit, sloth. And not without truth has it been said
that sloth is the mother of all vices, not forgetting that the supreme
sloth is that of not longing madly for immortality.
Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of
eternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God--these are never
satisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and to be all other
consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself: it seeks to be God.
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