"Namely?"
"Namely all the rest of life! Sex-life isn't everything, John. Not fit to be a mother, we said to them; never mind—there is everything else in the world to be. You may remember, my friend, that thousands of men, as vicious as any prostitutes, and often as diseased, continued to live, to work, and to enjoy. Why shouldn't the women? You haven't ruined your lives, we said to them; only one part. It's a loss, a great loss, but never mind, the whole range of human life remains open to you, the great moving world of service and growth and happiness. If you're sick, you're sick—we'll cure it if possible. If not, you'll die—never mind, we all die—that's nothing."
"Does your new religion call death nothing?"
"Certainly. The fuss we made about death was wholly owing to the old religions; the post-mortem religions, their whole basis was death."
"Hold on a bit. Do you mean to tell me the people aren't afraid of death any more?"
"Not a bit. Why should they be? Every living thing dies; that's part of the living. We do not hide it from children now, we teach it to them."
"Teach death—to children! How horrible!"
"Did you see or hear anything horrible in your educational excursions, John? I know you didn't. No, they learn it naturally; in their gardens; in their autumn and winter songs; in their familiarity with insects and animals. Our children learn life, death, and immortality, from silk-worms; and, then only incidentally. The silk is what they are studying.
"It takes a great many silk-worms to make silk, generations of them. They see them born, live and die, as incidents in silk culture. So we show them how people are born, live and die, in the making of human history. The idea is worked into our new educational literature—and all our literature for that matter. We see human life as a continuous whole now. People are only temporary parts of it. Dying isn't any more trouble than being born.
"People feared death, originally, because it hint; being chased and eaten was not pleasant. But natural dying does not hurt. Then they were made to fear it by the hell-school of religions. All that is gone by. Our religion rests on life."