"Surely, you do not mean for a life beyond this? One's best hope must be
that the whole miserable business ends with death."

"Have you found life so wretched?"

"I am not speaking from my own particular point of view. I am
singularly, exceptionally, fortunate, I am healthy; I have tastes which
I can gratify, work which I keenly enjoy. Whether the tastes are worth
gratifying or the work worth doing I cannot say. At least they act as an
anodyne to self-consciousness; they help me to forget the farce in
which I play my part. Like Solomon, and all who have had the best of
life, I call it vanity. What do you suppose it is to those--by far the
largest number, remember--who have had the worst of it? To them it is
not vanity, it is misery."

"But they suffer under the invariable laws you speak of--laws working
towards deliverance and happiness in the future."

"The future? Yes, I know that form of consolation which seems to satisfy
so many. To me it seems a hollow one. I have never yet been able to
understand how any amount of ecstasy enjoyed by B a million years hence
can make up for the torture A is suffering to-day. I suppose, dealing so
much with individuals as I do, I am inclined to individualise like a
woman. I think of units rather than of the mass. At this moment I have
before me a patient now left suffering pain as acute as any the rack
ever inflicted. How does it affect his case that centuries later such
pain may be unknown?"

"Of course, the individual's one and only hope is a future existence.