I Decline to Abstain

To answer the question is to err. Certainly, it is a contemplation unique to the human order, the mark of a higher nature and the signal instinct of a preternatural gift; of one who uses supernal talents to climb down from the tree and shed his tail. A mistake all the same.

Anyone who carries the slightest scruple into his ratiocination, who assess his motivations and wonders why he is so determined, can have anything but an easy time trusting his answer on this score. There is too much at stake on either side of the question for honesty to prevail, as might be otherwise in those easy moral ejaculations that is the custom of hatred and violence. How should doubt bridle rapture, or enfeebled faith open the curtains on benighted surrender? It is not to be asked of the mind to overrule the wants of the heart in this matter.

Nonetheless, it seems that for all its impossibility, answering is still the correct way to go about the conundrum, whose very scheme is taken as the miniature of life itself: a flawed question which begets flawed answers.

Then by the heritage we share with this vexing question, the only way to truly fail the test is to decline to answer. There is too much humanity here to be wagered in prudence, to not be boiled and blistered and bitten by the dilemma, to throw up the sponge and insight uncertainty; to import devices from the sterile, white-lacquered laboratory for investigating the sublime. Let go of the sounding line! You cannot measure these depths. Cast yourself overboard, and plunge into obsidian waters. Undress yourself of earthly caution, throw off the mask and bare your soul; succumb to the tossings of the waves.