Everything that can be, is bound to
come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.
July 14, 1859.--I have just read "Faust" again. Alas, every year I am
fascinated afresh by this somber figure, this restless life. It is the
type of suffering toward which I myself gravitate, and I am always
finding in the poem words which strike straight to my heart. Immortal,
malign, accursed type! Specter of my own conscience, ghost of my own
torment, image of the ceaseless struggle of the soul which has not yet
found its true aliment, its peace, its faith--art thou not the typical
example of a life which feeds upon itself, because it has not found its
God, and which, in its wandering flight across the worlds, carries
within it, like a comet, an inextinguishable flame of desire, and an
agony of incurable disillusion? I also am reduced to nothingness, and I
shiver on the brink of the great empty abysses of my inner being,
stifled by longing for the unknown, consumed with the thirst for the
infinite, prostrate before the ineffable. I also am torn sometimes by
this blind passion for life, these desperate struggles for happiness,
though more often I am a prey to complete exhaustion and taciturn
despair. What is the reason of it all? Doubt--doubt of one's self, of
thought, of men, and of life--doubt which enervates the will and weakens
all our powers, which makes us forget God and neglect prayer and
duty--that restless and corrosive doubt which makes existence impossible
and meets all hope with satire.
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