Why should
annihilation frighten thee, poor body, destined to corruption? Every hour
that strikes drags thee on to thy doom, every step breaks the round on
which thou hast just rested; thou art nourished by the dead; the air of
heaven weighs upon and crushes thee, the earth on which thou treadest
attacks thee by the soles of thy feet. Down with thee! Why art thou
affrighted? Dost thou tremble at a word? Merely say: 'We will not live.'
Is not life a burden that we long to lay down? Why hesitate when it is
merely a question of a little sooner or a little later? Matter is
indestructible, and the physicists, we are told, grind to infinity the
smallest speck of dust without being able to annihilate it. If matter is
the property of chance, what harm can it do to change its form since it
can not cease to be matter? Why should God care what form I have received
and with what livery I invest my grief? Suffering lives in my brain; it
belongs to me, I kill it; but my bones do not belong to me and I return
them to Him who lent them to me: may some poet make a cup of my skull
from which to drink his new wine What reproach can I incur and what harm
can that reproach do me? What stern judge will tell me that I have done
wrong? What does he know about it? Was he such as I? If every creature
has his task to perform and if it is a crime to shirk it, what culprits
are the babes who die on the nurse's breast! Why should they be spared?
Who will be instructed by the lessons which are taught after death? Must
heaven be a desert in order that man may be punished for having lived? Is
it not enough to have lived? I do not know who asked that question,
unless it was Voltaire on his death-bed; it is a cry of despair worthy of
a helpless old atheist.
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