Re: Da stimmt doch was nicht...

those who strive with all their
power to inform themselves and those who live without troubling or thinking
about it.

I can have only compassion for those who sincerely bewail their doubt, who
regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort to
escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious occupation.

But as for those who pass their life without thinking of this ultimate end
of life, and who, for this sole reason that they do not find within
themselves the lights which convince them of it, neglect to seek them
elsewhere, and to examine thoroughly whether this opinion is one of those
which people receive with credulous simplicity, or one of those which,
although obscure in themselves, have nevertheless a solid and immovable
foundation, I look upon them in a manner quite different.

This carelessness in a matter which concerns themselves, their eternity,
their all, moves me more to anger than pity; it astonishes and shocks me; it
is to me monstrous. I do not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual
devotion. I expect, on the contrary, that we ought to have this feeling from
principles of human interest and self-love; for this we need only see what
the least enlightened persons see.

We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is no
real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our
evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every
moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful
necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy.

There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as heroic
as we like, that is


.

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