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Thus our longing for immortality destroys itself while expressing itself, since it is on one of the accessory and most transient parts of our whole life that we base all the interest of our after-life. It seems to us that, if our existence be not continued with the greater part of its drawbacks, of the pettiness and blemishes that characterize it, nothing will distinguish it from that of other beings; that it will become a drop of ignorance in the ocean of the unknown; and that, thenceforth, all that may come to pass will no longer concern us.
What immortality can one promise to men who almost necessarily conceive it in this guise? What is the use of it? asks a puerile but profound instinct. Any immortality that does not drag with it through eternity, like the fetters of the convict that we were, the strange consciousness formed during a few years of movement, any immortality that does not bear that indelible mark of our identity is for us as though it were not. Most of the religions have been well aware of this and have reckoned with that instinct which desires and at the same time destroys the after-life. It is thus that the Catholic Church, going back to the most primitive hopes, promises us not only the integral preservation of our earthly ego, but even the resurrection of our own flesh.
There lies the crux of the riddle. When we demand that this small consciousness, that this sense of a special ego—almost childish and, in any case, extraordinarily limited; probably an infirmity of our actual intelligence—should accompany us into the infinity of time in order that we may understand and enjoy it, are we not wishing to perceive an object with the aid of an organ which is not intended for that purpose? Are we not asking that our hand should discover the light or that our eye should appreciate perfumes? Are we not, rather, acting like a sick man who, in order to recognize himself, to be quite sure that he is himself, should think it necessary to continue his sickness in health and in the unending sequence of his days? The comparison, indeed, is more accurate than is the habit of comparisons. Picture a blind man who is also paralyzed and deaf. He has been in this condition from his birth and has just attained his thirtieth year. What can the hours have embroidered on the imageless web of this poor life? The unhappy man must have gathered at the back of his memory, for lack of other recollections, a few halting sensations of heat and cold, of weariness and rest, of more or less active physical sufferings, of hunger and thirst. It is probable that all human joys, all our hopes and ideals, all our dreams of paradise will be reduced for him to the vague sense of well-being that follows the alleviation of a pain. There you have the only possible equipment of that consciousness and that ego. The intellect, having never been invoked from without, will sleep soundly, all-ignorant of itself. Nevertheless, the poor wretch will have his little life, to which he will cling as closely and eagerly as though he were the happiest of men. He will dread death; and the idea of entering into eternity without carrying with him the emotions and the memories of his dark and silent sick-bed will plunge him into the same despair into which we are plunged by the thought of abandoning a glorious life of light and love for the icy darkness of the tomb.