And this erostratism, what is it at bottom but the longing for immortality, if not for substantial and concrete immortality, at any rate for the shadowy immortality of the name?

And in this there are degrees.  If a man despises the applause of the crowd of to-day, it is because he seeks to survive in renewed minorities for generations.  “Posterity is an accumulation of minorities,” said Gounod.  He wishes to prolong himself in time rather than in space.  The crowd soon overthrows its own idols and the statue lies broken at the foot of the pedestal without anyone heeding it; but those who win the hearts of the elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship in some shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but capable of preserving them from the flood of oblivion.  The artist sacrifices the extensiveness of his fame to its duration; he is anxious rather to endure for ever in some little corner than to occupy a brilliant second place in the whole universe; he prefers to be an atom, eternal and conscious of himself, rather than to be for a brief moment the consciousness of the whole universe; he sacrifices infinitude to eternity.

And they keep on wearying our ears with this chorus of Pride! stinking Pride!  Pride, to wish to leave an ineffaceable name?  Pride?  It is like calling the thirst for riches a thirst for pleasure.  No, it is not so much the longing for pleasure that drives us poor folk to seek money as the terror of poverty, just as it was not the desire for glory but the terror of hell that drove men in the Middle Ages to the cloister with its acedia.  Neither is this wish to leave a name pride, but terror of extinction.  We aim at being all because in that we see the only means of escaping from being nothing.  We wish to save our memory—­at any rate, our memory.  How long will it last?  At most as long as the human race lasts.  And what if we shall save our memory in God?

Unhappy, I know well, are these confessions; but from the depth of unhappiness springs new life, and only by draining the lees of spiritual sorrow can we at last taste the honey that lies at the bottom of the cup of life.  Anguish leads us to consolation.

This thirst for eternal life is appeased by many, especially by the simple, at the fountain of religious faith; but to drink of this is not given to all.  The institution whose primordial end is to protect this faith in the personal immortality of the soul is Catholicism; but Catholicism has sought to rationalize this faith by converting religion into theology, by offering a philosophy, and a philosophy of the thirteenth century, as a basis for vital belief.  This and its consequences we will now proceed to examine.

FOOTNOTES: 

[11] Each time that I consider that it is my lot to die, I spread my cloak upon the ground and am never surfeited with sleeping.

[12] Nietzsche.

IV