Gleanings from Maeterlinck

by Maurice Maeterlinck

It becomes a question of knowing whether that spirit, sheltered from all sorrow, will remain itself, will perceive and recognize itself in the bosom of infinity and up to what point it is important that it should recognize itself. This brings us to the problems of survival without consciousness, or survival with a consciousness different from that of to-day.

Survival without consciousness seems at first sight the more probable. From the point of view of the good or ill awaiting us on the other side of the grave, it amounts to annihilation. It is lawful, therefore, for those who prefer the easiest solution and that most consistent with the present state of human thought to limit their anxiety to that. They have nothing to dread; for, on close inspection, every fear, if any remained, should deck itself with hopes. The body disintegrates and can no longer suffer; the mind, separated from the source of pleasure and pain, is extinguished, scattered and lost in a boundless darkness; and what comes is the great peace so often prayed for, the sleep without measure, without dreams and without awakening.

But this is only a solution that fosters indolence. If we press those who speak of survival without consciousness, we perceive that they mean only their present consciousness, for man conceives no other; and we have just seen that it is almost impossible for that manner of consciousness to persist in infinity.

Unless, indeed, they would deny every sort of consciousness, even that cosmic consciousness into which their own will fall. But this were to solve very quickly and very blindly, with a stroke of the sword in the night, the greatest and most mysterious question that can arise in a man’s brain.

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It is evident that, in the depths of our thought limited on every side, we shall never be able to form the least idea of an infinite consciousness. There is even an essential antinomy between the words consciousness and infinity. To speak of consciousness is to mean the most definite thing conceivable in the finite; consciousness, properly speaking, is the finite self-concentrated in order to discover and feel its closest limits, to the end that it may enjoy them as closely as possible. On the other hand, it is impossible for us to separate the idea of intelligence from the idea of consciousness. Any intelligence that does not seem capable of transforming itself into consciousness becomes for us a mysterious phenomenon to which we give names more mysterious still, lest we should have to admit that we understand nothing of it at all. Now, on this little earth of ours, which is but a dot in space, we see expended in every scale of life, as for instance, in the wonderful combinations and organisms of the insect world, a mass of intelligence so vast that our human intelligence cannot even dream of assessing it. Everything that exists—and man first of all—is incessantly drawing upon that inexhaustible reserve. We are therefore irresistibly driven to ask ourselves if that cosmic intelligence is not the emanation of an infinite consciousness, or if it must not, sooner or later, elaborate one. And this sets us tossing between two irreducible impossibilities. What is most probable is that here again we are judging everything from the lowlands of our anthropomorphism. At the summit of our infinitesimal life, we see only intelligence and consciousness, the extreme point of thought; and from this we infer that, at the summits of all lives, there could be naught but intelligence and consciousness, whereas these perhaps occupy only an inferior place in the hierarchy of spiritual or other possibilities.

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Survival absolutely denuded of consciousness would, therefore, be possible only if we deny the existence of a cosmic consciousness. When once we admit this consciousness, under whatsoever form, we are bound to share in it; and, up to a certain point, the question is indistinguishable from that of the continuance of a more or less modified consciousness. There is, for the moment, no hope of solving it; but we are free to grope in its darkness, which is not perhaps equally dense at all points.

Here begins the open sea. Here begins the splendid adventure, the only one abreast with human curiosity, the only one that soars as high as its highest longing. Let us accustom ourselves to regard death as a form of life which we do not yet understand; let us learn to look upon it with the same eye that looks upon birth; and soon our mind will be accompanied to the steps of the tomb with the same glad expectation that greets a birth.

Suppose that a child in its mother’s womb were endowed with a certain consciousness; that unborn twins, for instance, could, in some obscure fashion, exchange their impressions and communicate their hopes and fears to each other. Having known naught but the warm maternal shades, they would not feel straitened nor unhappy there. They would probably have no other idea than to prolong as long as possible that life of abundance free from cares and of sleep free from alarms. But, if, even as we are aware that we must die, they too knew that they must be born, that is to say, that they must suddenly leave the shelter of that gentle darkness and abandon for ever that captive but peaceful existence, to be precipitated into an absolutely different, unimaginable and boundless world, how great would be their anxieties and their fears! And yet there is no reason why our own anxieties and fears should be more justified or less ridiculous. The character, the spirit, the intentions, the benevolence or the indifference of the unknown to which we are subject do not alter between our birth and our death. We remain always in the same infinity, in the same universe. It is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to persuade ourselves that the tomb is no more dreadful than the cradle. It would even be legitimate and reasonable to accept the cradle only on account of the tomb. If, before being born, we were permitted to choose between the great peace of non-existence and a life that should not be completed by the glorious hour of death, which of us, knowing what he ought to know, would accept the disquieting problem of an existence that would not lead to the reassuring mystery of its end? Which of us would wish to come into a world where we can learn so little, if he did not know that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more? The best thing about life is that it prepares this hour for us, that it is the one and only road leading to the magic gateway and into that incomparable mystery where misfortunes and sufferings will no longer be possible, because we shall have lost the body that produced them; where the worst that can befall us is the dreamless sleep which we number among the greatest boons on earth; where, lastly, it is almost unimaginable that a thought should not survive to mingle with the substance of the universe, that is to say, with infinity, which, if it be not a waste of indifference can be nothing but a sea of joy.