Читать книгу Kobiety (Women). A Novel of Polish Life онлайн

32 страница из 53

“But did it never strike you that, if there is nothing beyond death, it is impossible for nothingness to be there?”

She looks at me inquiringly.

“The ideas of justice, of vengeance, of compensation, are purely of this earth, though they once formed a religious ideal in the worship of Jehovah. I put them in the same category as the concept of mercy, now prevailing amongst Christians. Some other idea will spring up later, equally foreign to that of existence beyond the grave.”

“Well, and what do you infer from that?”

“My belief is, that the phenomenon called death consists in our losing all sensations, ‘categories,’ concepts and all projections (so to speak) of this our world; and in our finding other sensations in the next. Perhaps not even that. For in the next world, just as there will be no idea of justice, so there may be none of sensations. Do you follow me?”

“So you think you shall continue to exist then?”

“I cannot say—I cannot say.”

For a few minutes I listen to the undertone of the pine-trees, sounding far above us in the sky.