And in the same way hell has been conceived as a sort of police
institution, necessary in order to put fear into the world. And the
worst of it is that it no longer intimidates, and therefore will have to
be shut up.
But, on the other hand, as a religious conception and veiled in mystery,
why not--although the idea revolts our feelings--an eternity of
suffering? why not a God who is nourished by our suffering? Is our
happiness the end of the Universe? or may we possibly sustain with our
suffering some alien happiness? Let us read again in the _Eumenides_ of
that terrible tragedian, AEschylus, those choruses of the Furies in
which they curse the new gods for overturning the ancient laws and
snatching Orestes from their hands--impassioned invectives against the
Apollinian redemption. Does not redemption tear man, their captive and
plaything, from the hands of the gods, who delight and amuse themselves
in his sufferings, like children, as the tragic poet says, torturing
beetles? And let us remember the cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?"
Yes, why not an eternity of suffering? Hell is an eternalization of the
soul, even though it be an eternity of pain. Is not pain essential to
life?
Men go on inventing theories to explain what they call the origin of
evil. And why not the origin of good? Why suppose that it is good that
is positive and original, and evil that is negative and derivatory?
"Everything that is, in so far as it is, is good," St.
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