d think
well.

And all this tragic fight of man to save himself, this immortal craving
for immortality which caused the man Kant to make that immortal leap of
which I have spoken, all this is simply a fight for consciousness. If
consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a
flash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing
more execrable than existence.

Some may espy a fundamental contradiction in everything that I am
saying, now expressing a longing for unending life, now affirming that
this earthly life does not possess the value that is given to it.
Contradiction? To be sure! The contradiction of my heart that says Yes
and of my head that says No! Of course there is contradiction. Who does
not recollect those words of the Gospel, "Lord, I believe, help thou my
unbelief"? Contradiction! Of course! Since we only live in and by
contradictions, since life is tragedy and the tragedy is perpetual
struggle, without victory or the hope of victory, life is contradiction.

The values we are discussing are, as you see, values of the heart, and
against values of the heart reasons do not avail. For reasons are only
reasons--that is to say, they are not even truths. There is a class of
pedantic label-mongers, pedants by nature and by grace, who remind me of
that man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly died
in the flower of his years, says to him, "Patience, my friend, we all
must die!" Would you think it strange if this father were offended at
such an impertinence? For it is an impertinence. There are times when
even an axiom can become an impertinence. How many times may it not be
said--

_Para pensar cual tu, solo es preciso
no tener nada mas que inteligencia_.[8]

There are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, or
with whatever may be the specific thinking organ; while others think
with all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow of
the bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the
life. And the people who think only with the brain develop into
definition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought. And you
know what a professional is? You know what a product of the
differentiation of labour is?

Take a professional boxer. He has learnt to hit with such economy of
effort that, while concentrating all his strength in the blow, he only
brings into play just those muscles that are r