“Death, the final epitome of senselessness, is the most distressing of all the appearances of the cave, and its impossibility can only be understood and enjoyed in a setting in which its possibility and even its certainty have at first been brought vividly before us. The sublime uncertainty of the draught of hemlock, the dark doubts of the stormy night under the Bodhi-tree, the anguish at Gethsemane and Calvary, are not dispensable preliminaries to the serene safety they lead to: they are part of, preserved in, the latter. It is only on a background of despairing skepticism that supreme dedication is possible, a dedication which can live in and for the mere possibilities which a deepening insight will then show to be the only possibilities, and hence the necessities of all being” (The Absolute and Rational Eschatology, Ascent to the Absolute, p. 77).