death, while on the contrary everything argued against it,--and to this
I could not refuse my assent.

Then I understood that in what I called Pantheism, the immortality of
the individual had no place. And a slow, internal struggle commenced for
renunciation of the importance and value of the individual. I had many a
conversation on this point with my teacher, a man tired of life and
thoroughly resigned.

He always maintained that the desire of the individual for a
continuation of personality was nothing but the outcome of vanity. He
would very often put the question in a comical light. He related the
following anecdote: In summer evenings he used to go for a walk along
the Philosopher's Avenue (now West Rampart Street). Here he had
frequently met, sitting on their benches, four or five old gentlemen who
took their evening ramble at the same time; by degrees they made each
other's acquaintance and got into conversation with one another. It
turned out that the old gentlemen were candle-makers who had retired
from business and now had considerable difficulty in passing their time
away. In reality they were always bored, and they yawned incessantly.
These men had one theme only, to which they always recurred with
enthusiasm--their hope in personal immortality for all eternity. And it
amused Broechner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill so
much as one Sunday evening, should be so passionately anxious to have a
whole eternity to fill up. His pupil then caught a glimpse himself of
the grotesqueness of wishing to endure for millions of centuries, which
time even then was nothing in comparison with eternity.


XX.