That Sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.
Byron.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A NATURAL CHANGE
Through generations, perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years, custom has ordained grief for the dead, we have come to feel that it is a proof of affection or of sensitiveness or a sort of virtue: we indulge in the luxury of woe, we nurse our grief until, like a spoiled lap-dog, it becomes a burden. But we know that the unselfish dead would only be distressed at our grieving.
When we look upon the change called death as no more mysterious than any of the other changes in our bodily or mental development, which we either welcome or are unconscious of, we shall lose our terror of it either for ourselves or for others.
Our terror for others is not really for those others so much as for ourselves. The sense of “our great loss” is really a piece of selfishness. For life cannot mean one thing for us and another for our brother; as we see our own lives, so must we see the lives of those we love. The purposes of life are the same for all men, for all men are in the plan of the Spirit.
If for any reason our brother has passed from our earthly cognizance, we cannot say that we have really lost him. It is true that we do not see him with our eyes or touch him with our hands, but we have a remembrance of him in the form of a mental picture down to the minutest details of how he looked and moved, and we also have a remembrance of his spiritual character.
For the character—that sum of the abilities of those we love—remains with us after the physical form has passed away. We are affected by it just as we were when the loved one lived. We can feel the appeal that that character makes to us, its effect upon our thoughts and actions, as strongly as if the absent one stood beside us and claimed our attention. How, then, can we say he is lost?