es they could tell! But dead men tell no
tales. While there's life there's hope; and so the worst cynicisms
have never been spoken. But I--I alone--have dodged the Fates. I am
the dead-alive, the living dead. I hover over my racked body like a
ghost, and exist in an interregnum. And so I am the first mortal in a
position to demand an explanation. Don't tell me I have sinned, and am
in hell. Most sins are sins of classification by bigots and poor
thinkers. Who can live without sinning, or sin without living? All
very well for Kant to say: 'Act so that your conduct may be a law for
all men under similar conditions.' But Kant overlooked that _you_ are
part of the conditions. And when you are a Heine, you may very well
concede that future Heines should act just so. It is easy enough to be
virtuous when you are a professor of pure reason, a regular, punctual
mechanism, a thing for the citizens of Koenigsberg to set their watches
by. But if you happen to be one of those fellows to whom all the roses
nod and all the stars wink ... I am for Schelling's principle: the
highest spirits are above the law. No, no, the parson's explanation
won't do. Perhaps heaven holds different explanations, graduated to
rising intellects, from parsons upwards. Moses Lump will be satisfied
with a gold chair, and the cherubim singing, 'holy! holy! holy!' in
Hebrew, and ask no further questions. Abdullah Ben Osman's mouth will
be closed by the kisses of houris. Surely Christ will not disappoint
the poor old grandmother's vision of Jerusalem the Golden seen through
tear-dimmed spectacles as she pores over the family Bible. He will
meet her at the gates of death with a wonderful smile of love; and, as
she walks upon the heavenly Jordan's shining waters, hand in hand with
Him, she will see her erst-wrinkled face reflected from them in
angelic beauty. Ah, but to tackle a Johann Wolfgang Goethe or a
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing--what an ordeal for the celestial Professor
of Apologetics! Perhaps that's what the Gospel means--only by becoming
little children can we enter the kingdom of heaven. I told my little
god-daughter yesterday that heaven is so pure and magnificent that
they eat cakes there all day--it is only what the parson says,
translated into child-language--and that the little cherubs wipe their
mouths with their white wings. 'That's very dirty,' said the child. I
fear that unless I become a child myself I shall have severer
criticisms to bring again