iS6o THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 



237 



And this leads me to my other point. 



As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, 

 with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating 

 minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, " If the dead 

 rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I 

 cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had 

 neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alterna- 

 tive involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest 

 in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What ! 

 because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have 

 given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a 

 great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings 

 which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to 

 renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, 

 the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the 

 poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek 

 distraction in a gorge. 



Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or 

 with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have 

 drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course 

 was arrested in time — before I had earned absolute destruction 

 — and for long years I have been slowly and painfully climbing, 

 with many a fall, towards better things. And when I look back, 

 what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption ? The 

 hope of immortality or of future reward ? I can honestly say 

 that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not en- 

 tered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at 

 work. Sartor Resartus led me to know that a deep sense of 

 religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology. 

 Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place in- 

 dependent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up 

 to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed 

 me with a deep sense of responsibility. 



If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless 

 carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance 

 the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim 

 on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when 

 I looked down into my boy's grave my sorrow was full of sub- 

 mission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have 

 worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my 

 poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from 

 whence it came and whither it goes. 



And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my 



