Mrs. Alderling went into the house and came out with a book in her hand,
and her fingers in it at two places. It was that impressive collection of
Christ's words from the New Testament called "The Great Discourse." She
put the book before me, first at one place and then at another, and I
read, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die," and then,
"Nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." She did not
say anything in showing me these passages, and I found something in her
action touchingly childlike and elemental, as well as curiously
heathenish. It was as if some poor pagan had brought me his fetish to
test its effect upon me. "Yes," I said, "those are things that we hardly
know what to do with in our philosophy. They seem to be said as with
authority, and yet, somehow, we cannot admit their validity in a
philosophical inquiry as to a future life. Aren't they generally taken to
mean that we shall be unhappy or happy hereafter, rather than that we
shall be or not be at all? And what is believing? Is it the mere act of
acknowledgement, or is it something more vital, which expresses itself in
conduct?"

She did not try to say. In fact she did not answer at all. Whatever point
was in her mind she did not, or could not, debate it. I perceived, in a
manner, that her life was so largely subliminal that if she had tried she
could not have met my question any more than if she had not had the gift
of speech at all. But, in her inarticulate fashion, she had exposed to me
a state of mind which I was hardly withheld by the decencies from
exploring. "You know," I said, "that psychology almost begins by
rejecting the authority of these sayings, and that while we no longer
deny anything, we cannot allow anything merely because it has been
strongly affirmed. Supposing that there is a life after this, how can it
be denied to one and bestowed upon another because one has assented to a
certain supernatural claim and another has refused to do so? That does