Come-and-go pervades everything of which we have knowledge, and
though great things go more slowly, they are built up of small ones
and must fare as that which makes them.
Are we to have our enjoyment of Handel and Shakespeare weakened
because a day will come when there will be no more of either Handel
or Shakespeare nor yet of ears to hear them? Is it not enough that
they should stir such countless multitudes so profoundly and kindle
such intense and affectionate admiration for so many ages as they
have done and probably will continue to do? The life of a great
thing may be so long as practically to come to immortality even now,
but that is not the point. The point is that if anything was aimed
at at all when things began to shape or to be shaped, it seems to
have been a short life and a merry one, with an extension of time in
certain favoured cases, rather than a permanency even of the very
best and noblest. And, when one comes to think of it, death and
birth are so closely correlated that one could not destroy either
without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that
makes creation possible.
If, however, any work is to have long life it is not enough that it
should be good of its kind. Many ephemeral things are perfect in
their way. It must be of a durable kind as well.
Living in Others
We had better live in others as much as we can if only because we
thus live more in the race, which God really does seem to care about
a good deal, and less in the individual, to whom, so far as I can
see, he is indifferent.
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