380 IMMORTALITY — 



must be consecrated to higher and more permanent 

 aims, to activities which, it may be, will enrich us 

 with a serener contentment even here, and certainly 

 \vill prove an inexhaustible source of abiding bliss 

 hereafter. And these advantages are a sufficient 

 reason, alike on personal and on social grounds, for 

 inclining favourably towards this belief But there 

 are other reasons, no less forcible and more obvious. 



One need not necessarily be violently enamoured 

 of one's own life, or cherish any abject desire for 

 personal continuance, in order to feel that if the 

 chapter of life Is definitely closed by death, despair 

 is the end of all its glories. For to assert that 

 death is the end of all beings, is to renounce the 

 ideal of happiness (ch. iv. §§ 5-17), to admit that 

 adaptation is impossible, and that the end of effort 

 must be failure. And It is to poison the whole of 

 life with this bitter consciousness. And further, it 

 is finally to renounce the faith In the rationality of 

 things, which could hardly be re-asserted against so 

 wanton a waste of energy as would be involved In 

 the destruction of characters and attainments it re- 

 quired so much patient toil and effort to acquire. A 

 good and wise man dies, and his goodness and his 

 wisdom, his incalculable powers to shape the course 

 of things for good, are wasted and destroyed. In 

 the light of such a fact, we should have to put the 

 worst construction alike upon the waste and the 

 parsimony of nature elsewhere. They will both ap- 

 pear inexplicable freaks of a senseless constitution 

 of things. 



Hence we must reject the extremes on either 

 side ; we must refuse, not only to be terrified by 

 maddening fears, to be intoxicated by unwarranted 

 hopes, but also to be cajoled by a disingenuous 



