But to what purpose? Why so many struggles? Who
is there above us who delights in so much agony? Who amuses himself and
whiles away an idle hour watching this spectacle of creation, always
renewed and always dying, seeing the work of man's hands rising, the
grass growing; looking upon the planting of the seed and the fall of the
thunderbolt; beholding man walking about upon his earth until he meets
the beckoning finger of death; counting tears and watching them dry upon
the cheek of pain; noting the pure profile of love and the wrinkled face
of age; seeing hands stretched up to him in supplication, bodies
prostrate before him, and not a blade of wheat more in the harvest! Who
is it then who has made so much for the pleasure of knowing that it all
amounts to nothing! The earth is dying; Herschell says it is of cold; who
holds in his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it as it dries
up, as an angler watches a grain of sand in his hand? That mighty law of
attraction that suspends the world in space, torments it and consumes it
in endless desire; every planet carries its load of misery and groans on
its axle; they call to each other across the abyss and each wonders which
will stop first. God controls them; they accomplish assiduously and
eternally their appointed and useless task; they whirl about, they
suffer, they burn, they become extinct and they light up with new flame;
they descend and they reascend, they follow and yet they avoid each
other, they interlace like rings; they carry on their surface thousands
of beings who are ceaselessly renewed; the beings move about, cross each
other's paths, clasp each other for an hour, and then fall and others
rise in their place; where life fails, life hastens to the spot; where
air is wanting, air rushes; no disorder, everything is regulated, marked
out, written down in lines of gold and parables of fire, everything keeps
step with the celestial music along the pitiless paths of life; and all
for nothing! And we, poor nameless dreams, pale and sorrowful
apparitions, helpless ephemera, we who are animated by the breath of a
second, in order that death may exist, we exhaust ourselves with fatigue
in order to prove that we are living for a purpose, and that something
indefinable is stirring within us.
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