ow, once and always, that they
are not a similitude, nor a fable nor semi-fable; that they are an
everlasting highest fact! "No Lake of Sicilian or other sulphur burns
now anywhere in these ages," sayest thou? Well, and if there did not!
Believe that there does not; believe it if thou wilt, nay hold by it
as a real increase, a rise to higher stages, to wider horizons and
empires. All this has vanished, or has not vanished; believe as thou
wilt as to all this. But that an Infinite of Practical Importance,
speaking with strict arithmetical exactness, an _Infinite_, has
vanished or can vanish from the Life of any Man: this thou shalt not
believe! O brother, the Infinite of Terror, of Hope, of Pity, did it
not at any moment disclose itself to thee, indubitable, un-nameable?
Came it never, like the gleam of _preter_natural eternal Oceans, like
the voice of old Eternities, far-sounding through thy heart of hearts?
Never? Alas, it was not thy Liberalism, then; it was thy Animalism!
The Infinite is more sure than any other fact. But only men can
discern it; mere building beavers, spinning arachnes, much more the
predatory vulturous and vulpine species, do not discern it well!--

'The word Hell,' says Sauerteig, 'is still frequently in use among the
English people: but I could not without difficulty ascertain what they
meant by it. Hell generally signifies the Infinite Terror, the thing a
man _is_ infinitely afraid of, and shudders and shrinks from,
struggling with his whole soul to escape from it. There is a Hell
therefore, if you will consider, which accompanies man, in all stages
of his history, and religious or other development: but the Hells of
men and Peoples differ notably. With Christians it is the infinite
terror of being found guilty before the Just Judge. With old Romans, I
conjecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom probably they
cared little, but of doing unworthily, doing unvirtuously, which was
their word for un_man_fully. And now what is it, if you pierce through
his Cants, his oft-repeated Hearsays, what he calls his Worships and
so forth,--what is it that the modern English soul does, in very
truth, dread infinitely, and contemplate with entire despair? What
_is_ his Hell, after all these reputable, oft-repeated Hearsays, what
is it? With hesitation, with astonishment, I pronounce it to be: The
terror of "Not succeeding;" of not making money, fame, or some other
figure in the world,--chiefly of not ma