ead 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. Augustine
affirmed. But why? What does "being good" mean? Good is good for
something, conducive to an end, and to say that everything is good is
equivalent to saying that everything is making for its end. But what is
its end? Our desire is to eternalize ourselves, to persist, and we call
good everything that conspires to this end and bad everything that tends
to lessen or destroy our consciousness. We suppose that human
consciousness is an end and not a means to something else which may not
be consciousness, whether human or superhuman.

All metaphysical optimism, such as that of Leibnitz, and all
metaphysical pessimism, such as that of Schopenhauer, have no other
foundation than this. For Leibnitz this world is the best because it
conspires to perpetuate consciousness, and, together with consciousness,
will, because intelligence increases will and perfects it, because the
end of man is the contemplation of God; while for Schopenhauer this
world is the worst of all possible worlds, because it conspires to
destroy will, because intelligence, representation, nullifies the will
that begot it.

And similarly Franklin, who believed in another life, asserted that he
was willing to live this life over again, the life that he had actually
lived, "from its beginning to the end"; while Leopardi, who did not
believe in another life, asserted that nobody would consent to live his
life over again. These two views of life are not merely ethical, but
religious; and the feeling of moral good, in so far