Still, the life we live
beyond the grave is our truest life, and our happiest, for we pass it
in the profoundest sleep as though we were children in our cradles.
If we are wronged it hurts us not; if we wrong others, we do not
suffer for it; and when we die, as even the Handels and Bellinis and
Shakespeares sooner or later do, we die easily, know neither fear nor
pain and live anew in the lives of those who have been begotten of
our work and who have for the time come up in our room.
An immortal like Shakespeare knows nothing of his own immortality
about which we are so keenly conscious. As he knows nothing of it
when it is in its highest vitality, centuries, it may be, after his
apparent death, so it is best and happiest if during his bodily life
he should think little or nothing about it and perhaps hardly suspect
that he will live after his death at all.
And yet I do not know--I could not keep myself going at all if I did
not believe that I was likely to inherit a good average three-score
years and ten of immortality. There are very few workers who are not
sustained by this belief, or at least hope, but it may well be
doubted whether this is not a sign that they are not going to be
immortal--and I am content (or try to be) to fare as my neighbours.
The World Made to Enjoy
When we grumble about the vanity of all human things, inasmuch as
even the noblest works are not eternal but must become sooner or
later as though they had never been, we should remember that the
world, so far as we can see, was made to enjoy rather than to last.
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