the saints in light which make the medieval scheme of heaven into
one protracted canticle--these are all deeply unattractive, and
have no power at all over the vigorous spirit. Even the vision of
Socrates, the hope of unrestricted converse with great minds, is a
very unsatisfying thought, because it yields so little material to
work upon.

The fact, of course, is that it is just the variety of experience
which makes life interesting,--toil and rest, pain and relief, hope
and satisfaction, danger and security,--and if we once remove the
idea of vicissitude from life, it all becomes an indolent and
uninspiring affair. It is the process of change which is
delightful, the finding out what we can do and what we cannot,
going from ignorance to knowledge, from clumsiness to skill; even
our relations with those whom we love are all bound up with the
discoveries we make about them and the degree in which we can help
them and affect them. What the mind instinctively dislikes is
stationariness; and an existence in which there was nothing to
escape from, nothing more to hope for, to learn, to desire, would
be frankly unendurable.

The reason why we dread death is because it seems to be a
suspension of all our familiar activities. It would be terrible to
have nothing but memory to depend upon. The only use of memory is
that it distracts us a little from present conditions if they are
dull, and it is only too true that the recollection in sorrow of
happy things is torture of the worst kind.

Once when Tennyson was suffering from a dangerous illness, his
friend Jowett wrote to Lady Tennyson to suggest that the poet might