Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

And although his power is far greater than mine, I fear him not — and will try to unmask him.

I have already said that the Antichrist did not come with pitch and sulphur as we had imagined he would arrive. His entrance was so excellently prepared that the hellish elements had long before been transformed into those that were seemingly natural, familiar and earthly. I should not be understood as agreeing with the opinion of those narrow-minded advocates of the view that industry and technical civilization are the works of hell. No! I am far removed from this viewpoint. For I believe that God himself has bestowed upon us the reason to investigate, to enquire, to uncover answers and solutions, better answers and solutions and still better answers and solutions. We were granted intelligence so that with its help we might relieve our hands of their heavy burden and gradually learn to hold high our heads, which were made in the image of God, so that they may project towards the heavens where, as it were, their sublime and eternal reflection is mirrored. When man was exiled from paradise and condemned to cultivate the earth in the sweat of his brow, limitlessly mild God — for He blesses even where he punishes — gave him the grace of reason to lighten his way, a memory of paradise, so to speak, a shining memory, a tiny jewel from the endless crown of divine wisdom. The good God gave man the blessing of reason to make the curse of labour milder and lighter. They are thus fools and knaves who say that inventions and discoveries are a curse, that machines are vices. But it is a vice to characterize invention, discovery, the fruits of research and the perceptions of the mind as victories that human understanding has gained over the eternally secret wisdom of the Infinite. As a tiny pebble to a mighty boulder, so does our ability to discover and invent compare with the wisdom of the Power that rules over us. For we have, as an example, conquered the air (for the moment), but this does not allow us to fly up to Heaven. Not only has it been ordained, as the proverb goes, that trees cannot reach Heaven, neither can men visit it. And never will we see a pilot harness the power that resides in an angel’s wings. Yes, one could say that Heaven becomes ever higher and ever further away from earth the higher and further we fly. And when we have reached the so-called stratosphere we have done nothing other than transport our earthly selves to a sphere that so far no earthly inhabitant has reached. We have lifted the earth upwards, so to speak; however, in no way have we brought Heaven downwards. And if we were able to climb even higher, to some unnamed planet, Heaven would recede even further away. (Let us take all this as a parable. Let us say that it is the nature of God’s fathomless wisdom that it remains unfathomable.) Oh, we have no idea what is above and what is below! We are so blind! And although we point upwards in ‘blind faith’ as we refer to God, there may be no such thing as above. And the folly of those who believe they have discovered the emptiness of Heaven because during their flight into the stratosphere they searched but found no God would be a hundred times greater than is the blindness of those believers who point upwards when they name the origin and the source of their faith. What is ‘above’? What is ‘below’? Alas, the world is populated with nothing but blind people! These blind are also confused! Many of them say that they are wise because they found knowledge in a place that other blind men, with no thirst for knowledge, showed them. And since a segment of those without sight declared that God is ‘above’, another portion of the blind make their way ‘above’ and, having not seen God, come back and say that He is not there. The reason that they do not see Him, however, is that they are blind. If they could see there wouldn’t be any need for them to make their way along the path that their blind brothers have showed them! One cannot see God with one’s physical eyes! One cannot smell God with one’s physical nose! One cannot hear God with one’s physical ears! One cannot feel God with one’s physical hands! For He has, and by no means without reason, given us only five senses. Had He wished that we should know Him during the span of our earthly life He would have granted us not five but a thousand senses. But He has given us no more than five! Perhaps so that we may not be capable of knowing Him in our lifetime.

And now, arrogant as we are, many among us believe that we can deny Him because we are powerless to know Him. We therefore take revenge for His severity. If He withholds the grace of knowing him, we say that He doesn’t exist.

Among us, the common blind, are those who are specially blind, those to whom one cannot explain the difference between night and day.

How could we have so misused our reason? And how is it that this, a gift from God, as mentioned, the unique and last memory of Paradise Lost, has led us to folly and the vice of arrogant behaviour, to blasphemous and false views?

It was in no way foolish, reckless or arrogant to use our faculties of reason, as I have said earlier, but in the course of its application a power that we cannot perceive with the help of our five senses has forced itself between us and the grace of reason that is our heritage; and thus the blessing became a curse. When we believed that we were capable of thinking clearly and logically, we were already confused. And, truly, it was not with the type of confusion that occurred at the time of the Tower of Babel but, rather, a confusion within the clarity itself. This clarity was not the same as the false clarity of a wanderer in the desert who takes a fata Morgana as reality and heads towards it. No, it was such that reality itself became a fata Morgana! It did not dissolve into the air when we reached it. It was physical; it was tangible. It was not our tired senses that gave in to an illusion but our fresh and well rested senses. As we were being led astray we were not suffering from what might be considered sickness or exhaustion; rather, it appeared to us to be quite natural. Our reasoning was intact, our senses were alive and the goal lay very clearly in front of us. We even reached it. But it was, none the less, a trick. And thus we are like wanderers in the desert who are capable of catching up with the deceptive mirage that beckons them, of taking up residence in houses and castles that do not exist, of quenching their thirst from fake springs, of resting in the shade of palms that are not there and refreshing themselves with dates that are not really fruit. They then believe that their thirst has been quenched, but they are still thirsty; that their bellies are full, but they are still hungry; that they have shelter, but they have none. So it is. Our satiety is still hunger and thirst; our home is still homelessness; and what we call reality is still an illusion, for what we call knowledge is a hoax. We believe that we are drinking from plentiful springs, but they are parched wells that are themselves thirsty.