dissolution of the body; moreover, the soul, whatever it may be, is so
intimately one with the body, and is affected so seriously by the
weaknesses, passions, and prejudices of the body, that without it my
soul would not be myself, and the fable of the resurrection of the
body, of this same brain and heart, was more than I could ever swallow
in my most orthodox days.

But the greatest difficulty was the inability to believe that the
Almighty intended to preserve all the mass of human beings, all the
countless millions of barbaric, half-bestial forms which, since the
appearance of man, had wandered upon the earth, savage or civilised.
Is it like Nature's way to be so careful about individuals, and is it
to be supposed that, having produced, millions of years ago, a creature
scarcely nobler than the animals he tore with his fingers, she should
take pains to maintain him in existence for evermore? The law of the
universe everywhere is rather the perpetual rise from the lower to the
higher; an immortality of aspiration after more perfect types; a
suppression and happy forgetfulness of its comparative failures.

There was nevertheless an obstacle to the acceptance of this negation
in a faintness of heart which I could not overcome. Why this ceaseless
struggle, if in a few short years I was to be asleep for ever? The
position of mortal man seemed to me infinitely tragic. He is born into
the world, beholds its grandeur and beauty, is filled with unquenchable
longings, and knows that in a few inevitable revolutions of the earth
he will cease. More painful still; he loves somebody, man or woman,
with a surpassing devotion; he is so lost in his love that he cannot
endure a moment without it; and when he sees it pass away in death, he
is told that it is extinguished--that that heart and mind absolutely
are NOT.