ay that there are others more bitter; for whosoever is
deprived of life is deprived at the same time of the power to lament,
not only this, but any other loss whatsoever." Whether Galileo was
conscious or not of the humour of this sentence I do not know, but it is
a tragic humour.

But, to turn back, I repeat that if the attainment of eternal happiness
could be bound up with any particular belief, it would be with the
belief in the possibility of its realization. And yet, strictly
speaking, not even with this. The reasonable man says in his head,
"There is no other life after this," but only the wicked says it in his
heart. But since the wicked man is possibly only a man who has been
driven to despair, will a human God condemn him because of his despair?
His despair alone is misfortune enough.

But in any event let us adopt the Calderonian formula in _La Vida es
Sueno_:

_Que estoy sonando y que quiero
obrar hacer bien, pues no se pierde
el hacer bien aun en suenos_[54]

But are good deeds really not lost? Did Calderon know? And he added:

_Acudamos a lo eterno
que es la fama vividora
donde ni duermen las dichas
no las grandezas reposan_[55]

Is it really so? Did Calderon know?

Calderon had faith, robust Catholic faith; but for him who lacks faith,
for him who cannot believe in what Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca
believed, there always remains the attitude of _Obermann_.

If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let
us fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory; let us
fight against it quixotically.

And not only do we fight against destiny in longing for what is
irrational, but in acting in such a way that we make ourselves
irreplaceable, in impressing our seal and mark upon others, in acting
upon our neighbours in order to dominate them, in giving ourselves to
them in order that we may eternalize ourselves so far as we can.

Our greatest endeavour must be to make ourselves irreplaceable; to make
the theoretical fact--if this expression does not involve a
contradiction in terms--the fact that each one of us is unique and
irreplaceable, that no one else can fill the gap that will be left when
we die, a practical truth.

For in fact each man is unique and irreplaceable; there cannot be any
other I; each one of us--our soul, that is, not our life--is worth the
whole Universe. I say the spirit and not the life, for the ridiculously
ex