Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/362

Rh such a last moment, it must be a last moment, not of a nature-process, but of a moral Ego. But a temporal moral Ego that still says: “Now I am fulfilled; there is no more beyond; time ends for me,” — it seems a contradiction in terms.

The traditional view of immortality is subject to just this paradox. Its essence is, to say that the just in heaven are perfected, that the lost in hell are fixed in an eternal state. This view is so far, barring its allegorical form, strictly philosophical. On the other hand, tradition tries to conceive this perfected state as one in which something temporal happens. But the temporal happening conflicts with the perfection. An atrocious tautology of irrational torment emphasises ever afresh to the damned the now absolutely trite brute fact that they are damned. The fact at once loses all rational significance when thus repeated. One has to add an endless, ugly, and useless misery, in order to keep the now established and ancient fact of damnation temporally and sensuously alive. The effect of the doctrine is, so far, grewsome but grotesque. Yet the perfection of the saints, when you view that as a temporal affair, is obviously conceived in an equally unreal form. What now happens? The individual saint knows no change, progresses to no new ideal, survives in an endlessly delicious and insignificant tautology of bliss and of thanksgiving. Nothing happens, but all goes on and on forever.

I hasten to add that tradition is often aware that all these things are but symbols of an experience that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and that it hath not