Our Eternity

by Maurice Maeterlinck

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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.

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Let us now suppose that a miracle suddenly quicken his eyes and ears and reveal to him, through the open window by his bedside, the dawn rising over the plain, the song of the birds in the trees, the murmur of the wind among the leaves and of the water lapping its banks, the echoing of human voices among the morning hills. Let us suppose also that the same miracle, completing its work, restore the use of his limbs. He rises, stretches his arms to that prodigy which as yet for him possesses neither reality nor name: the light! He opens the door, staggers out amidst the effulgence; and his whole body is merged in the wonder of it all. He enters into an ineffable life, into a sky whereof no dream could have given him a foretaste; and, by a freak which is readily admissible in this sort of cure, health, introducing him to this inconceivable and unintelligible existence, wipes out in him all memory of days past.

What will be the state of this ego, of this central focus, the receptacle of all our sensations, the spot in which converges all that belongs in its own right to our life, the supreme point, the “egotic” point of our being, if I may venture to coin a word? Memory being abolished, will that ego recover within itself a few traces of the man that was? A new force, the intellect, awaking and suddenly displaying unprecedented activity, what relation will that intellect keep up with the inert, dull germ whence it has sprung? Where, in his past, shall the man fix his moorings so that his identity may endure? And yet will there not survive within him some sense or instinct, independent of his memory, his intellect and I know not what other faculties, that will make him recognize that it is indeed in him that the liberating miracle has been wrought, that it is indeed his life and not his neighbour’s, transformed, irrecognizable, but substantially the same, that has issued from the silence and the darkness to prolong itself in harmony and light? Can we picture the disorder, the wandering hither and thither of that bewildered consciousness? Have we any idea in what manner the ego of yesterday will unite with the ego of to-day and how the “egotic” point, the only point which we are anxious to preserve intact, will behave in that delirium and that upheaval?

Let us first endeavour to reply with sufficient precision to this question which comes within the province of our actual and visible life; for, if we are unable to do this, how can we hope to solve the other problem that stares every man in the face at the hour of death?

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This sensitive point, in which the whole problem is summed up—for it is the only one in question; and, except in so far as it is concerned, immortality is certain—this mysterious point, to which, in the presence of death, we attach so high a value, we lose, strange to say, at any moment in life without feeling the least anxiety. Not only is it destroyed nightly in our sleep, but even in waking it is at the mercy of a host of accidents. A wound, a shock, an illness, a little alcohol, a little opium, a little smoke are enough to affect it. Even when nothing impairs it, it is not uniformly perceptible. An effort is often necessary, a deliberate looking into ourselves, before we can recover it and become aware of some particular event. At the least distraction, a joy passes by us without touching us, without giving up the pleasure which it contains. One would say that the functions of that organ by which we taste and know life are intermittent and that the presence of our ego, except in pain, is but a rapid and perpetual sequence of departures and returns. What reassures us is that we think ourselves certain to find it intact on awaking, after the wound, the shock or the distraction, whereas we are persuaded, so fragile do we feel it to be, that it is bound to disappear for ever in the awful impact between life and death.