we should govern our conduct here by hope of reward or fear of
punishment hereafter. But under Mardon's remorseless criticism, when
he insisted on asking for the where and how, and pointed out that all
attempts to say where and how ended in nonsense, my hope began to fail,
and I was surprised to find myself incapable of living with proper
serenity if there was nothing but blank darkness before me at the end
of a few years.

As I got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching
after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow
only, a reason for the joyfulness of to-day. I learned, when, alas! it
was almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my head,
believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it will ever
be, and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow. But
when I was young I was the victim of that illusion, implanted for some
purpose or other in us by Nature, which causes us, on the brightest
morning in June, to think immediately of a brighter morning which is to
come in July. I say nothing, now, for or against the doctrine of
immortality. All I say is, that men have been happy without it, even
under the pressure of disaster, and that to make immortality a sole
spring of action here is an exaggeration of the folly which deludes us
all through life with endless expectation, and leaves us at death
without the thorough enjoyment of a single hour.

So I shrank from Mardon, but none the less did the process of
excavation go on. It often happens that a man loses faith without
knowing it. Silently the foundation is sapped while the building
stands fronting the sun, as solid to all appearance as when it was
first turned out of the builder's hands, but at last it falls suddenly
with a crash. It was so at this time with a personal relationship of