company.

As for the rest of my time--well, I employ it in doing what good I
can among the poor and those who need comfort or who are bereaved,
especially among those who are bereaved, for to such I am sometimes able
to bring the breath of hope that blows from another shore.

Occasionally also I amuse myself in my own fashion. Thus sure knowledge
has come to me about certain epochs in the past in which I lived in
other shapes, and I study those epochs, hoping that one day I may find
time to write of them and of the parts I played in them. Some of these
parts are extremely interesting, especially as I am of course able to
contrast them with our modern modes of thought and action.

They do not all come back to me with equal clearness, the earlier
lives being, as one might expect, the more difficult to recover and the
comparatively recent ones the easiest. Also they seem to range over a
vast stretch of time, back indeed to the days of primeval, prehistoric
man. In short, I think the subconscious in some ways resembles the
conscious and natural memory; that which is very far off to it grows dim
and blurred, that which is comparatively close remains clear and sharp,
although of course this rule is not invariable. Moreover there is
foresight as well as memory. At least from time to time I seem to come
in touch with future events and states of society in which I shall have
my share.

I believe some thinkers hold a theory that such conditions as those of
past, present, and future do not in fact exist; that everything already
is, standing like a completed column between earth and heaven; that
the sum is added up, the equation worked out. At times I am tempted to