No, we are all glad to have come this way once. It is the thought of a
second journey over the same ground that chills us and gives us pause.
Sometimes you will hear men answer, "Yes, if I could have the experience I
have had in this life." By which they mean, "Yes, if I could come back with
the certainty of making all the short cuts to happiness that I now see I
have missed." But that is to vulgarise the question. It is to ask that life
shall not be a splendid mystery, every day of which is

an arch wherethrough
Gleams the untravelled world;

but that it shall be a thoroughly safe three per cent. investment into
which I can put my money with the certainty of having a good time--all
sunshine and no shadows. But life on those terms would be the dreariest
funeral march of the marionettes. Take away the uncertainty of life, and
you take away all its magic. It would be like going to the wicket with the
certainty of making as many runs as you liked. No one would trouble to go
to the wicket on those preposterous terms. It is because I may be out first
ball or stay in and make a hundred runs (not that I ever did any such
heroic thing) that I put on the pads with the feverish sense of adventure.
And it is because every dawn breaks as full of wonder as the first day of
creation that life preserves the enchantment of a tale that is never told.

Moreover, how would experience help us? It is character which is destiny.
If you came back with that weak chin and flickering eye, not all the
experience of all the ages would save you from futility.

No, if life is to be lived here again it must be lived on the same unknown
terms in order to be worth living. We must come, as we came before, like