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 a necessity; I need it in order to live.

And you, who are you? you ask me; and I reply with Obermann, “For the universe, nothing; for myself, everything!” Pride?  Is it pride to want to be immortal?  Unhappy men that we are!  ’Tis a tragic fate, without a doubt, to have to base the affirmation of immortality upon the insecure and slippery foundation of the desire for immortality; but to condemn this desire on the ground that we believe it to have been proved to be unattainable, without undertaking the proof, is merely supine.  I am dreaming ...?  Let me dream, if this dream is my life.  Do not awaken me from it.  I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul.  But do I really believe in it ...?  And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore?  Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to ask the reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the principle.

But these are things which it is impossible to discuss.

It is related in the book of the Acts of the Apostles how wherever Paul went the Jews, moved with envy, were stirred up to persecute him.  They stoned him in Iconium and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, in spite of the wonders that he worked therein; they scourged him in Philippi of Macedonia and persecuted his brethren in Thessalonica and Berea.  He arrived at Athens, however, the noble city of the intellectuals, over which brooded the sublime spirit of Plato—­the Plato of the gloriousness of the risk of immortality; and there Paul disputed with Epicureans and Stoics.  And some said of him, “What doth this babbler (spermologos) mean?” and others, “He