It was important, and has been helpful, to insist that man is an animal, but it is still more important to insist that he is a spirit as well.  He is, so to say, an animal by accident, a spirit by birthright:  and, however homely his duties may occasionally seem, his life is bathed in the light of a sacred transfiguring significance, its smallest acts flash with divine meanings, its highest moments are rich with ’the pathos of eternity,’ and its humblest duties mighty with the responsibilities of a god.

DEATH AND TWO FRIENDS

A DIALOGUE

(To the Memory of J.S. and T.C.L.)

PERSONS:  SCRIPTOR AND LECTOR.

[This dialogue was written originally as a rejoinder to certain criticisms on a book of mine entitled, The Religion of a Literary Man—­Religio Scriptoris—­hence the names given to the two ‘persons.’  It was written in March 1894, before an event in the writer’s life to which, erroneously, some have supposed it to refer.]

LECTOR.  But do you really mean, Scriptor, that you have no desire for the life after death?

SCRIPTOR.  I never said quite that, Lector, though perhaps I might almost have gone so far.  What I did say was that we have been accustomed to exaggerate its importance to us here and now, that it really matters less to us than we imagine.

LECTOR.  I see.  But you must speak for yourself, Scriptor.  I am sure that it matters much to many, to most of us.  It does, I know, to me.

SCRIPTOR.  Less than you think, my dear Lector.  Besides, you are really too young to know.  It is true that, as years go, you are ten years my senior, but what of that?  You have that vigorous health which is the secret of perpetual youth.  You have not yet realised decay, not to speak of death.  The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, who have as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body.  But I—­well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day.  The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints.  To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents his pistol—­and the smoke that curls upward from his empty barrel is your soul.

To another he comes featureless, a stealthily accumulating London fog, that slowly, slowly chokes the life out of you, without allowing you the consolation of a single picturesque moment, a single grand attitude.  For you, probably, Death will only come when you die.  I have to live with him as well.  I shall smoulder for years, you will be carried to heaven, like Enoch, in a beautiful lightning.

        ’A simple child
    That lightly draws its breath,
    And feels its life in every limb,
    What can it know of Death?’

That’s you, my dear Lector, for all your forty years.

LECTOR.  All the more reason, Scriptor, that you should desire a hereafter.  You sometimes talk of the work you would do if you were a robust Philistine such as I. Would it not be worth while to live again, if only to make sure of that magnum opus—­just to realise those dreams that you say are daily escaping you?