“He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.”
“How true that is! How terrible and inevitable!” he thought.
“Here I sit, alive, thirsting for life and joy, and read my death- warrant. Yet I cannot even protest against it!”
As in a frenzy of despair, he clasped his forehead and with ineffectual fury appealed to some Power invisible and supreme.
“What has man done to thee that thou shouldst mock him thus? If thou dost exist, why dost thou hide thyself from him? Why hast thou made me thus, that even though I would believe in thee I yet have no belief in my own faith? And, if thou shouldst answer me, how can I tell if it is thou or I myself that makes reply? If I am right in wishing to live, why dost thou rob me of this right which thou thyself gavest to me? If thou hast need of our sufferings, well, these let us bear for love of thee. Yet we know not even if a tree be not of greater worth than a man.
“For a tree there is always hope. Even when felled it can put forth fresh shoots, and regain new verdure and new life. But man dies, and vanishes for ever. I lie down never to rise again. If I knew for certain that after milliards of years I should come to life again, patient and uncomplaining I would wait through all those centuries in outer darkness.”
Once more he read from the book:
“What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
“One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever.
“The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose.