SOUNDINGS 



not going to lie awake nights in his grave worrying 

 about it? There is comfort in the thought that if 

 there is no immortality, we shall not know it. 



Rereading that wise and delightful old French- 

 man, Montaigne, I find that more than three hun- 

 dred years ago he was of the same mind that I am 

 in this matter: "Why should we fear a thing whose 

 being lost cannot be lamented?" "To lament that 

 we shall not be alive a hundred years hence is the 

 same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hun- 

 dred years ago." 



An avaricious man might worry if he knew he 

 would have no more money on the next Christmas 

 than he had on the last, unless his physician had as- 

 sured him that he could not be alive on the next 

 Christmas. Then, if he worried, it would be on ac- 

 count of his heirs. But one's heirs cannot inherit his 

 wisdom; it dies with him. 



Death is such an extraordinary, such an un- 

 speakable event that we cannot think of ourselves 

 as non-existent. When you try to see yourself in 

 your own coffin, or standing beside your own grave, 

 it is still as a living man that you thus behold your- 

 self. It is, of course, as living men and women that 

 we are disturbed over thoughts of the grave. The fu- 

 ture is just as secure for us all as is the past. A mo- 

 ment between two eternities is life; a spark that 

 draws a brief line upon the darkness and is gone. 

 The spark has its antecedent condition in the wood 



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