“Oh—about ideas. You mean right and wrong, and the future life and the soul, I suppose.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. In a hundred thousand ages we shall never get one inch further than we are now. A little bit more to the right, please—but go on looking at me a moment longer, if you’re not tired.”
“I’ve only just sat down again. But what you were saying—you meant to add that we know nothing, and that it’s all a perfectly boundless uncertainty.”
“Not at all. I think we know some things and shan’t lose them, and we don’t know some others and never shall.”
“What kind of things, for instance?” asked Katharine. “In the first place, there is a soul, and it is immortal.”
“Lucretius says that there is a soul, but that it isn’t immortal. There’s something, anyhow—something I can’t paint. People who deny the existence of the soul never tried to paint portraits, I believe.”
“You certainly have most original ideas.”
“Have I? But isn’t that true? I know it is. There’s something in every face that I can’t paint—that the greatest painter that ever lived can’t paint. And it’s not on account of the material, either. One can get just as near to it in black and white as in colours,—just near enough to suggest it,—and yet one can see it. I call it the ghost. I don’t know whether there are ghosts or not, but people say they’ve seen them. They are generally colourless, apparently, and don’t stay long. But did you ever notice, in all those stories, that people always recognize the ghost instantly if it’s that of a person they’ve known?”
“Yes. Now I think of it, that’s true,” said Katharine.
“Well, that’s why I call the recognizable something about the living person his ghost. It’s what we can’t get. Now, another thing. If one is told that the best portrait of some one whom one knows is a portrait of some one else instead, one isn’t much surprised. No, really—I’ve tried it, just to test the likeness. Most people say they are surprised, but they’re not. They fall into the trap in a moment, and tell you that they see that they were mistaken, but that it’s a strong resemblance. That couldn’t happen with a real person. It happens easily with a photograph—much more easily than with a picture. But with a real person it’s quite different, even though he may have changed immensely since you saw him—far beyond the difference between a good portrait and the sitter, so far as details are concerned. But the person—you recognize him at once. By what? By that something which we can’t catch in a picture. I call it the ghost—it’s a mere fancy, because people used to believe that a ghost was a visible soul.”