For the truth is
that metaphysics has no value save in so far as it attempts to explain
in what way our vital longing can or cannot be realized. And thus it is
that there is and always will be a rational metaphysic and a vital
metaphysic, in perennial conflict with one another, the one setting out
from the notion of cause, the other from the notion of substance.
And even if we were to succeed in imagining personal immortality, might
we not possibly feel it to be something no less terrible than its
negation? "Calypso was inconsolable at the departure of Ulysses; in her
sorrow she was dismayed at being immortal," said the gentle, the
mystical Fenelon at the beginning of his _Telemaque_. Was it not a kind
of doom that the ancient gods, no less than the demons, were subject
to--the deprivation of the power to commit suicide?
When Jesus took Peter and James and John up into a high mountain and was
transfigured before them, his raiment shining as white as snow, and
Moses and Elias appeared and talked with him, Peter said to the Master:
"Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three
tabernacles; one for thee and one for Moses and one for Elias," for he
wished to eternalize that moment. And as they came down from the
mountain, Jesus charged them that they should tell no man what they had
seen until the Son of Man should have risen from the dead. And they,
keeping this saying to themselves, questioned one with another what this
rising from the dead should mean, as men not understanding the purport
of it.
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