MYSELF:  “No one denies that such a picture in the mind haunts men their whole lives through, though, after they have once experienced loss and incompletion, and especially when they have caught sight a long way off of the Barrier which ends all our experience, they recognise that picture for a cheat; and surely nothing can save it?  That which reasons in us may be absolute and undying; for it is outside Time.  It escapes the gropings of the learned, and it has nothing to do with material things.  But as for all those functions which we but half fulfil in life, surely elsewhere they cannot be fulfilled at all?  Colour is for the eyes and music is for the ears; and all that we love so much comes in by channels that do not remain.”

He:  “Yet the Desire can only be for things that we have known; and the Desire, as you have said, is a proof of the thing desired, and, but for these things which we know, the words ‘joy’ and ‘contentment’ and ‘fulfilment’ would have no meaning.”

MYSELF:  “Why yes; but, though desires are the strongest evidence of truth, yet there is also desire for illusions, as there is a waking demand for things attainable, and a demand in dreams for things fantastic and unreal.  Every analogy increasingly persuades us, and so does the whole scheme of things as we learn it, that, with our passing, there shall also pass speech and comfortable fires and fields and the voices of our children, and that, when they pass, we lose them for ever.”

He:  “Yet these things would not be, but for the mind which receives them; and how can we make sure what channels are necessary for the mind? and may not the mind stretch on?  And you, since you reject my guess at what may be reserved for us, tell me, what is the End which we shall attain?”

MYSELF:  “Salva fide, I cannot tell.”

Then he continued and said:  “I have too long considered these matters for any opposition between one experience and another to affect my spirit, and I know that a long and careful inquiry into any matter must lead the same man to opposing conclusions; but, for my part, I shall confidently expect throughout that old age, which is not far from me, that, when it ceases, I shall find beyond it things similar to those which I have known.  For all I here enjoy is of one nature; and if the life of a man be bereft of them at last, then it is falsehood or metaphor to use the word ‘eternal.’”

“You think, then,” said I, “that some immortal part in us is concerned not only with our knowledge, but with our every feeling, and that our final satisfaction will include a sensual pleasure:  fragrance, and landscape, and a visible home that shall be dearer even than these dear hills?”

“Something of the sort,” he said, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.  They were broad, as he sat beside me staring at the fire.  They conveyed in their attitude that effect of mingled strength and weariness which is common to all who have travelled far and with great purpose, perpetually seeking some worthy thing which they could never find.