g this blissful moment, to sleep, to eternalize oneself in
it! Here and now, in this discreet and diffused light, in this lake of
quietude, the storm of the heart appeased and stilled the echoes of the
world! Insatiable desire now sleeps and does not even dream; use and
wont, blessed use and wont, are the rule of my eternity; my disillusions
have died with my memories, and with my hopes my fears.

And they come seeking to deceive us with a deceit of deceits, telling us
that nothing is lost, that everything is transformed, shifts and
changes, that not the least particle of matter is annihilated, not the
least impulse of energy is lost, and there are some who pretend to
console us with this! Futile consolation! It is not my matter or my
energy that is the cause of my disquiet, for they are not mine if I
myself am not mine--that is, if I am not eternal. No, my longing is not
to be submerged in the vast All, in an infinite and eternal Matter or
Energy, or in God; not to be possessed by God, but to possess Him, to
become myself God, yet without ceasing to be I myself, I who am now
speaking to you. Tricks of monism avail us nothing; we crave the
substance and not the shadow of immortality.

Materialism, you say? Materialism? Without doubt; but either our spirit
is likewise some kind of matter or it is nothing. I dread the idea of
having to tear myself away from my flesh; I dread still more the idea of
having to tear myself away from everything sensible and material, from
all substance. Yes, perhaps this merits the name of materialism; and if
I grapple myself to God with all my powers and all my senses, it is that
He may carry me in His arms beyond death, looking into these eyes of
mine with the light of His heaven when the light of earth is dimming in
them for ever. Self-illusion? Talk not to me of illusion--let me live!

They also call this pride--"stinking pride" Leopardi called it--and they
ask us who are we, vile earthworms, to pretend to immortality; in virtue
of what? wherefore? by what right? "In virtue of what?" you ask; and I
reply, In virtue of what do we now live? "Wherefore?"--and wherefore do
we now exist? "By what right?"--and by what right are we? To exist is
just as gratuitous as to go on existing for ever. Do not let us talk of
merit or of right or of the wherefore of our longing, which is an end in
itself, or we shall lose our reason in a vortex of absurdities. I do not
claim any right or merit; it is only