Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/398

Rh namely, of my friend’s coming destiny. But my object has so far, at least in a measure, entered into my experience, and has overwhelmed me, whose idea defined the object, with the despair of non-fulfilment. Here is a Being in apparently direct conflict with its own idea, and an idea apparently at war with its own object. How is our theory to explain this?

I answer, in the first place, precisely as the mystic would have done in a similar case: By our own definition of Being, you have not empirically found your whole final object, the entire and individual fact of Being that you seek, so long as you seek still for an Other. It is precisely as the Other that Being is not yet empirically present. Loneliness and despair, just because they are dissatisfied, look beyond themselves for Being. And in presence of death you do thus seek for the Other, namely, for the meaning of this fact, for the solution of this mystery, for the beloved object that is gone, for the lost life, for something not here, for the unseen, — yes, for the Eternal. And in this your search for the eternal lies for you the very meaning of death and of finite despair.

As Mary passionately cried, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him,” so every mourner knows precisely this, — that true Being is not finally here where death is, but is elsewhere. The true object, then, the actual Being that you seek, is not found, but merely seems to be lost, at the moment of death. Where, then, is that object? Not here, Not here, cries despair. Aye, Elsewhere, answers our teaching, Elsewhere is precisely the true Being that you seek.