hrist, should we hesitate for a moment in
surrendering ourselves utterly to Him? Would the stream that flows into
the sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of the
salt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish to
return to the cloud which drew its life from the sea? is not its joy to
feel itself absorbed?

And yet....

Yes, in spite of everything, this is the climax of the tragedy.

And the soul, my soul at least, longs for something else, not
absorption, not quietude, not peace, not appeasement, it longs ever to
approach and never to arrive, it longs for a never-ending longing, for
an eternal hope which is eternally renewed but never wholly fulfilled.
And together with all this, it longs for an eternal lack of something
and an eternal suffering. A suffering, a pain, thanks to which it grows
without ceasing in consciousness and in longing. Do not write upon the
gate of heaven that sentence which Dante placed over the threshold of
hell, _Lasciate ogni speranza!_ Do not destroy time! Our life is a hope
which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its
turn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an
eternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. 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 dream