Whenever I put forward some project, something which it appears to
me ought to be done, there is always somebody who is sure to ask me:
And afterwards? To such a question the only possible reply is another
question. To the “And afterwards?” one can only ripost by an “And
before?”
There is no future, there is never any future. This thing that is
called the future is one of the greatest of deceptions. The real
future is to-day. What is going to happen to us to-morrow? There is no
to-morrow. What is happening to us to-day? That is the only question.
And so far as to-day is concerned, all these petty souls are quite
content because to-day they exist. Existing suffices them. Existence,
sheer, naked existence, fills their whole soul. They don’t feel that
there is something more than existing.
But do they exist? Do they really exist? I believe not. For if they
existed, if they really existed, they would suffer because they
existed, existing would not content them. If they really and truly
existed in time and in space they would suffer because they did not
exist in eternity and in infinity. And this suffering, this passion,
which is nothing other than the passion of God in us, of God who in
us suffers at feeling Himself imprisoned in our finitude and our
temporality, this divine suffering would cause them to break all
those paltry logical chains with which they seek to bind their paltry
memories to their paltry hopes, the illusion of their past to the
illusion of their future.
“Why does he do it?” Did Sancho, perchance, never inquire why Don
Quixote did the things that he did?
And to return to your question, to your preoccupation: With what
collective madness could we inoculate these tranquil multitudes? With
what delirium?
You yourself have hinted at a solution in one of those letters in which
you bombard me with questions. “Do you not believe,” you asked me,
“that it might be possible to start some new crusade?”
Yes, I believe that it is possible to start the holy crusade for the
redemption of the sepulchre of Don Quixote from the dominion of the
bachelors, curates, barbers, dukes and canons who have taken possession
of it. I believe that it is possible to start the holy crusade for the
redemption of the sepulchre of the Knight of Folly from the dominion of
the mandarins of Reason.
They will defend their usurpation, naturally, and will endeavour to
prove with many and elaborate reasons that the guard and custody of the
sepulchre belongs to them. They guard it in order that the Knight shall
not rise again.
These reasons must be answered with insults, with stone-throwings,
with shouts of passion, with lance-thrusts. These people are not to be
reasoned with. If you try to reason against their reasons, you are lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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