instance, that a very sacred and intimate record, say, two hundred
years old, were to be found among some family papers, it is
inconceivable that any one would object to its publication on the
ground that the writer of it, or the people mentioned in it, would
not have wished it to see the light. We show how weak our faith
really is in the continuance of personal identity after death, by
allowing the lapse of time to affect the question at all; just as
we should consider it a horrible profanation to exhume and exhibit
the body of a man who had been buried a few years ago, while we
approve of the action of archaeologists who explore Egyptian
sepulchres, subscribe to their operations, and should consider a
man a mere sentimentalist who suggested that the mummies exhibited
in museums ought to be sent back for interment in their original
tombs. We think vaguely that a man who died a few years ago would
in some way be outraged if his body were to be publicly displayed,
while we do not for an instant regard the possible feelings of
delicate and highly-born Egyptian ladies, on whose seemly sepulture
such anxious and tender care was expended so many centuries ago.

But in this case there is no such responsibility. None of the
persons concerned have any objection to the publication of these
records, and as for the writer himself he was entirely free from
any desire for a fastidious seclusion. His life was a secluded one
enough, and he felt strongly that a man has a right to his own
personal privacy. But his own words sufficiently prove, if proof
were needed, that he felt that to deny the right of others to
participate in thoughts and experiences, which might uplift or help
a mourner or a sufferer, was a selfish form of individualism with
which he had no sympathy whatever. He felt, and I have heard him
say, that one has no right to withhold from others any reflections