Essays on Life 



say Titiens, Trebelli, and Jenny Lind, with 

 any two of the finest men singers the age has 

 known let them be photographed incessantly 

 for half an hour while they perform a scene in 

 " Lohengrin " ; let all be done stereoscopically. 

 Let them be phonographed at the same time 

 so that their minutest shades of intonation 

 are preserved, let the slides be coloured by a 

 competent artist, and then let the scene be 

 called suddenly into sight and sound, say a 

 hundred years hence. Are those people dead 

 or alive? Dead to themselves they are, but 

 while they live so powerfully and so livingly 

 in us, which is the greater paradox to say 

 that they are alive or that they are dead ? To 

 myself it seems that their life in others would 

 be more truly life than their death to them- 

 selves is death. Granted that they do not 

 present all the phenomena of life who ever 

 does so even when he is held to be alive ? 

 We are held to be alive because we present 

 a sufficient number of living phenomena to let 

 the others go without saying ; those who see 

 us take the part for the whole here as in every- 

 thing else, and surely, in the case supposed 



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