ON IMMORTALITY: COUNTERTHESIS. 177 



2. And our dear ones, are we to meet them never 

 more ? Our loved ones, for whom we would have given 

 our blood, for whom we cheerfully suffered and made 

 sacrifice, are we to see them no more in the field of time ? 

 Was, then, the terrible and agonized adieu by the grave's 

 side in truth the last, the eternal farewell ? If it be so, 

 alas for earthly love ! If it be so, then has Nature been 

 malignantly mocking us when she gave us the feelings 

 of love and affection, and made them so sweet. If it be 

 so, we have been betrayed, and Nature, that we thought 

 loved us, is not only deaf and blind, but has a heart of 

 stone. 



We do not ask a hereafter as a recompense for our 

 poor virtues, nor an eternity to attain to perfection in 

 virtue, nor yet to the full blaze of knowledge ; we desire 

 a hereafter to meet again with those we have loved, those 

 whose presence we found on earth so fair. Virtue and 

 knowledge are good, but the heart is left out of count in 

 these arguments, which postulate an eternity to attain 

 to perfection in knowledge and virtue. The heart is left 

 out in the arguments of the philosophers, and the heart's 

 simpler logic only asks a future for the reunion of souls. 

 And wherefore not ? Is not love and affection the most 

 divine thing that Nature evoked in the long course of 

 her evolutions ? Is it not the greatest thing in conscious- 

 ness ; greater than will, greater than knowledge ? Has 

 it not been " mightier far, than magic potent over sun or 

 star," to move the soul, to move the world ? And is not 

 the attraction of soul to soul more wonderful than that 

 of star to star ? It is our love that demands a hereafter. 

 .And Nature, so rich in her potentialities, so infinite in 

 .her resources, can she not accomplish this ? So good ; 

 will she not accord us this ? Nay, then, the imperious 

 hunger of our hearts, the very might of our desires, which 



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