is the risk that we are able to run of our
souls never dying--a sentence that was the germ of Pascal's famous
argument of the wager.

Faced with this risk, I am presented with arguments designed to
eliminate it, arguments demonstrating the absurdity of the belief in the
immortality of the soul; but these arguments fail to make any impression
upon me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it is
not with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die--no; I
neither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to live for
ever and ever and ever. I want this "I" to live--this poor "I" that I am
and that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem of
the duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me.

I am the centre of my universe, the centre of the universe, and in my
supreme anguish I cry with Michelet, "Mon moi, ils m'arrachent mon moi!"
What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own
soul? (Matt. xvi. 26). Egoism, you say? There is nothing more universal
than the individual, for what is the property of each is the property of
all. Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do
to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to
each. That which we call egoism is the principle of psychic gravity, the
necessary postulate. "Love thy neighbour as thyself," we are told, the
presupposition being that each man loves himself; and it is not said
"Love thyself." And, nevertheless, we do not know how to love ourselves.

Put aside the persistence of your own self and ponder what they tell
you. Sacrifice yourself to your children! And sacrifice yourself to them
because they are yours, part and prolongation of yourself, and they in
their turn will sacrifice themselves to their children, and these
children to theirs, and so it will go on without end, a sterile
sacrifice by which nobody profits. I came into the world to create my
self, and what is to become of all our selves? Live for the True, the
Good, the Beautiful! We shall see presently the supreme vanity and the
supreme insincerity of this hypocritical attitude.

"That art thou!" they tell me with the Upanishads. And I answer: Yes, I
am that, if that is I and all is mine, and mine the totality of things.
As mine I love the All, and I love my neighbour because he lives in me
and is part of my consciousness, because he is like me, because he is
mine.

Oh, to prolon