Both +Shelly Jebe and +Amber Z were discussing this and it got me thinking about a famous quotation from Joseph Addison that I penned in my journal a little while ago:
Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful, thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass?
I looked this up. It is from Addison's play called Cato, from a soliloquy in which the famed Roman was just reading Plato's writings on the immortality of the soul. At least since Plato's time eternity has beguiled us, and is tied to questions of being and immortality. Here's the larger speech:
Those last lines echo St. Paul, "For now we see through a glass, darkly" (1 Cor 13:12). Cato is contemplating suicide, but like Hamlet is fearful about whether death will actually settle things one way or another. The "dread of something after death" suggests that the contemplation of eternity is not necessarily optimistic. It may in fact be dreadful. The "undiscovered country" by which Shakespeare refers to death might be a dark continent, not a promised land, depending on one's beliefs.
Those last lines echo St. Paul, "For now we see through a glass, darkly" (1 Cor 13:12). Cato is contemplating suicide, but like Hamlet is fearful about whether death will actually settle things one way or another. The "dread of something after death" suggests that the contemplation of eternity is not necessarily optimistic. It may in fact be dreadful. The "undiscovered country" by which Shakespeare refers to death might be a dark continent, not a promised land, depending on one's beliefs.
So, the dread of death, and the wonder of eternal life, are somehow intertwined. This is the paradox of the sublime. What other examples can you think of?
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