Thus do
ideas exist, but not thus do men live. Thus do ideas exist in the
God-Idea, but not thus can men live in the living God, in the God-Man.
An eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternal
ascent. If there is an end of all suffering, however pure and
spiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end of all desire,
what is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If in
paradise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him?
And if even there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God little
by little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining to
Him, there does not always remain something more for them to know and
desire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shall
they not fall asleep?
Or, to sum up, if in heaven there does not remain something of this
innermost tragedy of the soul, what sort of a life is that? Is there
perhaps any greater joy than that of remembering misery--and to remember
it is to feel it--in time of felicity? Does not the prison haunt the
freed prisoner? Does he not miss his former dreams of liberty?
* * * * *
Mythological dreams! it will be said. And I have not pretended that they
are anything else. But has not the mythological dream its content of
truth? Are not dream and myth perhaps revelations of an inexpressible
truth, of an irrational truth, of a truth that cannot be proven?
Mythology! Perhaps; but, as in the days of Plato, we must needs
mythologize when we come to deal with the other life.
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