And In Its Very
Stuff There Is A Complete And Changeless Joy.
This is surely what the
great mind meant when it said to the Athenian judges that death must
not
Be dreaded since no experience in life was so pleasurable as a
deep sleep; for being wise and seeing the intercommunion of things, he
could not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a lapse into that
under-part of which I speak. For there are gods also below the earth.
But a dream came into my sleep and disturbed me, increasing life, and
therefore bringing pain. I dreamt that I was arguing, at first easily,
then violently, with another man. More and more he pressed me, and at
last in my dream there were clearly spoken words, and he said to me,
'You must be wrong, because you are so cold; if you were right you
would not be so cold.' And this argument seemed quite reasonable to me
in my foolish dream, and I muttered to him, 'You are right, I must be
in the wrong. It is very cold ...' Then I half opened my eyes and saw
the telegraph pole, the trees, and the lake. Far up the lake, where
the Italian Frontier cuts it, the torpedo-boats, looking for
smugglers, were casting their search-lights. One of the roving beams
fell full on me and I became broad awake. I stood up. It was indeed
cold, with a kind of clinging and grasping chill that was not to be
expressed in degrees of heat, but in dampness perhaps, or perhaps in
some subtler influence of the air.
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