I feel
myself returning into a more elementary form. I behold my own
unclothing; I forget, still more than I am forgotten; I pass gently into
the grave while still living, and I feel, as it were, the indescribable
peace of annihilation, and the dim quiet of the Nirvana. I am conscious
of the river of time passing before and in me, of the impalpable shadows
of life gliding past me, but nothing breaks the cateleptic tranquillity
which enwraps me.
I come to understand the Buddhist trance of the Soufis, the kief of the
Turk, the "ecstasy" of the orientals, and yet I am conscious all the
time that the pleasure of it is deadly, that, like the use of opium or
of hasheesh, it is a kind of slow suicide, inferior in all respects to
the joys of action, to the sweetness of love, to the beauty of
enthusiasm, to the sacred savor of accomplished duty. November 28,
1859.--This evening I heard the first lecture of Ernest Naville
[Footnote: The well-known Genevese preacher and writer, Ernest Naville,
the son of a Genevese pastor, was born in 1816, became professor at the
Academy of Geneva in 1844, lost his post after the revolution of 1846,
and, except for a short interval in 1860, has since then held no
official position. His courses of theological lectures, delivered at
intervals from 1859 onward, were an extraordinary success.
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