Chapter 44 Immortal Soul
Aurora's head got hot in the face of the puzzle.
The witch's blessing only gave her the speed of learning and memory, which didn't seem to help her much when dealing with difficult problems that required improvisation.
"This treasure cannot be seen or touched. It should have no substance!"
"A treasure without a physical body. Courage? Or some other quality like kindness?"
"No, that's not right. Mermaids have these qualities, too!"
Suddenly, the mermaid princess Ariel's frown suddenly opened, and she raised her hand and said:
"I, I understand!"
What? Ariel actually guessed it.
Aurora was very surprised: this quiet and elegant mermaid princess was obviously not a knowledgeable wise person.
Could it be that the answer to the puzzle is something that ordinary humans would find hard to imagine, but that the mermaid princess Ariel values very much because of her special experience?
"The answer, the answer is..." Ariel was about to shout out the answer.
"stop!"
Unexpectedly, the sea witch shouted, "Princess, this is a puzzle for two human children. You are not allowed to answer it or remind them."
Ariel had to stop talking, anxious.
I don't know when she started to accept these two human friends and worry about their gains and losses! Aurora tried to give the answer: "Love! Is the answer love? I mean, the love of humans for mermaids."
She deliberately emphasized that it was humans' love for mermaids, so doesn't that mean humans have it and mermaids don't?
The moment she shouted out this answer, the blonde girl felt delighted.
Yes, love cannot be seen, but it is praised in countless poems; it cannot be touched, but it can be polluted and washed. Because love does not exist in reality, it is lighter than the wind and softer than the fog! At the same time, love is indeed a treasure more precious than gold. Because love can be recorded and passed down, it can last through the years and never die.
Besides, didn’t Ariel recently fall in love with a human prince?
"Humans' love for mermaids" is indeed something that "I couldn't think of it at the first moment, but the mermaid princess Ariel has been craving for recently."
They met! The sea witch was stunned.
After a few seconds, she announced emotionlessly: "Wrong answer."
In an instant, Aurora suddenly realized and remembered the last sentence of the puzzle: "This treasure is more important to the dead than to the living!"
Love doesn’t qualify.
How should I answer this? Aurora frowned.
At this moment, a clear and high voice of a young man rang out: "Immortal Soul."
The silver-haired boy Rhine, who had not answered, suddenly raised his chin and repeated the answer word for word: "The eternal and immortal soul."
Ariel opened her mouth and looked at Rhine with wide eyes, then she smiled and breathed a sigh of relief for her two new friends.
She knew that her human friend had given the right answer.
"Ah? What does this mean?" Aurora didn't understand at once.
Does this answer fit the question? Rhine slowly explained: "The eternal and immortal soul is the answer to this puzzle.
“No one can see the soul, but countless poems and articles have been written to praise it;
“No one can touch the soul, but the soul can be polluted and cleansed—we often say that vile teaching pollutes the soul, while holy scenes cleanse it.
“The soul is weightless, therefore lighter than the wind; the soul is priceless, therefore more precious than gold.
“The soul is softer than mist, but because it is eternal and immortal, it will never die even after the passage of time.
"Most importantly, the immortal soul is of course more important to the dead than to the living! It is because the body will perish that the immortality of the soul is meaningful."
After listening to Rhine's explanation, Aurora vaguely felt that something was wrong.
Did the teacher deliberately ignore [one of the sentences] in the puzzle question?
"But, doesn't the riddle say..." Aurora opened her mouth to ask the teacher, but Rhine seemed to know what she wanted to ask.
Rhine said calmly, "Yes, Aurora. Just as the puzzle says, humans have immortal souls, but mermen and other non-human intelligent creatures do not."
The mermaid princess Ariel lowered her head and said nothing.
"Your answer is correct." The sea hag laughed loudly, "Human, I never thought you knew this. Even in this kingdom in the sea, only a few wise elders know this secret."
The old sea witch continued:
“Humans have a much shorter lifespan than mermen and other intelligent creatures of the sea.
"But what you humans have that we don't have is the shining immortal soul.
“Some say that when the body perishes, the immortal soul soars up into the clear sky, toward the shining stars, into the heavenly kingdom; or, in particularly bad cases, falls infinitely downward, to the deepest parts of the earth, lower than the seabed.
"In short, it's about going to another world, a world we will never see.
“It is also said that the immortal soul will return to the human world and be reborn as a newborn baby.
“When an old person passes away and his family members cry for the first time, somewhere in the world, another baby will cry just as loudly. Death and rebirth are a pair of conjoined twin sisters, they always hug each other tightly and never separate.
"No one in all history has ever truly died."
At this point, the sea witch laughed a little crazily:
“All of the above statements are just beautiful poems that belong exclusively to you humans.
“As for us, intelligent non-human beings, once we die, we will just turn into a ball of foam, a pool of slime, and disappear without a trace.
"Because we, unlike you, do not have an immortal soul."
It is really like this... Rhine sighed in his heart.
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Even if you already know the answer, being in this situation is a completely different feeling.
In some adapted and simplified versions of the story "The Little Mermaid", or in the adapted story called "The Little Mermaid", the story between the mermaid princess and the prince is just a love story that is easy for children to understand.
The little mermaid wanted to become a human because she loved the prince.
She finally turned into foam under the morning sun and was regarded as a sacrifice for love.
And this story officially ends with the sad and beautiful scene of the little mermaid's body melting into foam.
Live for love, die for love.
But in Andersen's writing, this story seems to have deeper theological connotations and religious implications.
One of the most important reasons why the little mermaid wanted to marry the prince was that she was pursuing an immortal soul. She wanted to gain an immortal soul by falling in love with and marrying a human.
This religious connotation also extends to the end of the work: after turning into foam, the little mermaid seems to hear the voice of an angel and turns into the daughter of the sky.
The glory of God is hidden in the text of the story.
God... Rhine's thoughts were in a mess.
He also noticed that the story of the immortal soul told by the sea witch in front of him was very different from what was said in the original work!
In the original story, the "immortal soul" was only described as ascending to heaven.
According to the sea witch, although the wise men in the sea knew the existence of the "immortal soul", its whereabouts remained a mystery.
May rise, may fall, may even be reincarnated:
“When an old person passes away and his family members cry for the first time, somewhere in the world, another baby will cry just as loudly. Death and rebirth are a pair of conjoined twin sisters, they always hug each other tightly and never separate.”
Rhine is convinced that this statement does not have a single word in common with the original.
Its core connotation is completely different from the ideas of Christian scholastic philosophy. It does not imply the existence of a single god. Instead, it is somewhat similar to the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, which dilutes the original theological flavor.
Does this mean that in this fantasy world, "the immortality of the human soul" is just an objective natural law, no more special than "water flows from high to low" and "the sun rises from the east and sets in the west"?
The immortal soul of human beings is not a gift from gods.
In this fantasy and magical world, it is very likely that there is no omniscient and omnipotent God!
Thinking of this, Rhine breathed a sigh of relief.
The sea witch snorted coldly, "But don't forget, it's meaningless to just solve the first puzzle. You still have to answer the next two questions."
"It's worthy of the price the sea witch asked for!" The mermaid princess sighed in her heart, feeling a little uneasy:
After Rhine and Aurora, she also wanted to pray to the sea witch to grow human legs, go to the land, and be with the prince.
So, what will the cost be?
"Now comes the second question. Listen carefully, human."
The sea witch said loudly:
"Humans, you already know the answer to the first question: the eternal and immortal soul.
"Tell me, then, how long is eternity?
"Is eternity a hundred years? A thousand years? Or ten thousand years? "Wise human, please tell me the length of eternity."
(End of this chapter)