But we have just
seen that whenever we seek to give a form that is concrete, conceivable,
or in other words, rational, to our primary, primordial, and fundamental
longing for an eternal life conscious of itself and of its personal
individuality, esthetic, logical, and ethical absurdities are multiplied
and there is no way of conceiving the beatific vision and the
apocatastasis that is free from contradictions and inconsistencies.
And nevertheless!...
Nevertheless, yes, we must needs long for it, however absurd it may
appear to us; nay, more, we must needs believe in it, in some way or
another, in order that we may live. In order that we may live, eh? not
in order that we may understand the Universe. We must needs believe in
it, and to believe in it is to be religious. Christianity, the only
religion which we Europeans of the twentieth century are really capable
of feeling, is, as Kierkegaard said, a desperate sortie (_Afsluttende
uvidenskabelig Efterskrift_, ii., i., cap. i.), a sortie which can be
successful only by means of the martyrdom of faith, which is, according
to this same tragic thinker, the crucifixion of reason.
Not without reason did he who had the right to do so speak of the
foolishness of the cross. Foolishness, without doubt, foolishness. And
the American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was not altogether wide of
the mark in making one of the characters in his ingenious conversations
say that he thought better of those who were confined in a lunatic
asylum on account of religious mania than of those who, while professing
the same religious principles, kept their wits and appeared to enjoy
life very well outside of the asylums.
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