cannot conceive it encumbered by my egotism perpetually. I shall serve
my purpose and pass under the wheel and end. That distresses me not at
all. Immortality would distress and perplex me. If I may put this in a
mixture of theological and social language, I cannot respect, I cannot
believe in a God who is always going about with me.

But this is after all what I feel is true and what I choose to believe.
It is not a matter of fact. So far as that goes there is no evidence
that I am immortal and none that I am not.

I may be altogether wrong in my beliefs; I may be misled by the
appearances of things. I believe in the great and growing Being of the
Species from which I rise, to which I return, and which, it may be, will
ultimately even transcend the limitation of the Species and grow into
the Conscious Being, the eternally conscious Being of all things.
Believing that, I cannot also believe that my peculiar little thread
will not undergo synthesis and vanish as a separate thing.

And what after all is my distinctive something, a few capacities, a few
incapacities, an uncertain memory, a hesitating presence? It matters no
doubt in its place and time, as all things matter in their place and
time, but where in it all is the eternally indispensable? The great
things of my life, love, faith, the intimation of beauty, the things
most savouring of immortality, are the things most general, the things
most shared and least distinctively me.


2.13. A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY.

And here perhaps, before I go on to the question of Conduct, is the