Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/46

 which the just Creator never can dispense, is quite unattainable by a finite being, an eternally continuing progress, i. e. an unceasing duration, must contain and prove this conformity in God's eyes, who overlooks the everlasting course. Therefore our immortality is necessary."

Karlson stood still at Gione's side, that we might approach, and said: "Dear philosopher, pray take from this proof the boldness or the indistinctness which it has for laymen. How can we imagine the supervision, i. e. the termination, of an infinite, a never-ending course? or how will you make the eternity of time harmonize with the eternity of the moral requirements. How can a righteousness, scattered and dispersed over an interminable period of time, satisfy Divine Justice, which must require this righteousness in each portion of the period. And has the constant approximation of man towards this state of purity been proved? And will not the number, if not the grossness of faults, in this infinite space, increase with the number of virtues? And what comparison will the list of faults bear to that of the virtues at the examination? But let us leave that also. Will, in the sight of the Divine eye, the moral purity of two different beings—for instance, a seraph and a man, or of two different men, as Robespierre and Socrates—be equally contained in two equally long, i. e. eternal, courses of time? If on comparing the two, a difference appear, then one of them cannot have attained the so-called perfection, and must still be mortal."

The Chaplain answered: "But Kant does not intend to demonstrate immortality by this argument. He says even, that it has been left so uncertain in order that free, pure will, and no selfish views, shall prompt our aspirations to immortality." "Strange," said Karlson. "But as we