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Was she as mad as they thought?  At the present moment, the great questions of the world beyond the grave are pressing upon us from every side.  It is probable that, since the world began, there have never been so many dead as now.  The empire of death was never so mighty, so terrible; it is for us to defend and enlarge the empire of life.  In the presence of this mother, which are right or wrong, those who are convinced that their dead are forever swept out of existence, or those who are persuaded that their dead do not cease to live, who believe that they see them and hear them?  Do we know what it is that dies in our dead, or even if anything dies?  Whatever our religious faith may be, there is at any rate one place where they cannot die.  That place is within ourselves; and, if this unhappy mother went beyond the truth, she was yet nearer to it than those despairing ones who nourish the mournful certainty that nothing survives of those whom they loved.  She felt too keenly what we do not feel keenly enough.  She remembered too much; and we do not know how to remember.  Between the two errors there is room for a great truth; and, if we have to choose, hers is the error towards which we should lean.  Let us learn to acquire through reason that which a wise madness bestowed on her.  Let us learn from her to live with our dead and to live with them without sadness and without terror.  They do not ask for tears, but for a happy and confident affection.  Let us learn from her to resuscitate those whom we regret.  She called to hers, while we repulse ours; we are afraid of them and are surprised that they lose heart and pale and fade away and leave us forever.  They need love as much as do the living.  They die, not at the moment when they sink into the grave, but gradually as they sink into oblivion; and it is oblivion alone that makes the separation irrevocable.  We should not allow it to heap itself above them.  It would be enough to vouchsafe them each day a single one of those thoughts which we bestow uncounted upon so many useless objects:  they would no longer think of leaving us; they would remain around us and we should no longer understand what a tomb is; for there is no tomb, however deep, whose stone may not be raised and whose dust dispersed by a thought.

There would be no difference between the living and the dead if we but knew how to remember.  There would be no more dead.  The best of what they were dwells with us after fate has taken them from us; all their past is ours; and it is wider than the present, more certain than the future.  Material presence is not everything in this world; and we can dispense with it and yet not despair.  We do not mourn those who live in lands which we shall never visit, because we know that it depends on us whether we go to find them.  Let it be the same with our dead.  Instead of believing that they have disappeared never to return, tell yourselves that they are in a country to which you yourself will assuredly go