Such considerations must appear to these pedants to be characterized by a ridiculous vulgarity and a dilettante superficiality. (The intellectual world is divided into two classes—­dilettanti on the one hand, and pedants on the other.) What choice, then, have we?  The modern man is he who resigns himself to the truth and is content to be ignorant of the synthesis of culture—­witness what Windelband says on this head in his study of the fate of Hoelderlin (Praeludien, i.).  Yes, these men of culture are resigned, but there remain a few poor savages like ourselves for whom resignation is impossible.  We do not resign ourselves to the idea of having one day to disappear, and the criticism of the great Pedant does not console us.

The quintessence of common sense was expressed by Galileo Galilei when he said:  “Some perhaps will say that the bitterest pain is the loss of life, but I say that there are others more bitter; for whosoever is deprived of life is deprived at the same time of the power to lament, not only this, but any other loss whatsoever.”  Whether Galileo was conscious or not of the humour of this sentence I do not know, but it is a tragic humour.

But, to turn back, I repeat that if the attainment of eternal happiness could be bound up with any particular belief, it would be with the belief in the possibility of its realization.  And yet, strictly speaking, not even with this.  The reasonable man says in his head, “There is no other life after this,” but only the wicked says it in his heart.  But since the wicked man is possibly only a man who has been driven to despair, will a human God condemn him because of his despair?  His despair alone is misfortune enough.

But in any event let us adopt the Calderonian formula in La Vida es Sueno: 

    Que estoy sonando y que quiero
    obrar hacer bien, pues no se pierde
    el hacer bien aun en suenos[54]

But are good deeds really not lost?  Did Calderon know?  And he added: 

Acudamos a lo eterno que es la fama vividora donde ni duermen las dichas no las grandezas reposan[55]

Is it really so?  Did Calderon know?

Calderon had faith, robust Catholic faith; but for him who lacks faith, for him who cannot believe in what Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca believed, there always remains the attitude of Obermann.

If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let us fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory; let us fight against it quixotically.

And not only do we fight against destiny in longing for what is irrational, but in acting in such a way that we make ourselves irreplaceable, in impressing our seal and mark upon others, in acting upon our neighbours in order to dominate them, in giving ourselves to them in order that we may eternalize ourselves so far as we can.

Our greatest endeavour must be to make ourselves irreplaceable; to make the theoretical fact—­if this expression does not involve a contradiction in terms—­the fact that each one of us is unique and irreplaceable, that no one else can fill the gap that will be left when we die, a practical truth.