“Not now, nor ever, mother.”
“Yes, Sophia; hereafter. You cannot suppose that your present feelings are to last through your existence?”
An internal shudder was here visible which gave the lie to what the sufferer had said of the enviableness of her calm state of feeling. Her mother continued,—
“Just tell me what you are to do with such a spirit as yours in the next world?”
“How do we know that there is another world?” cried Sophia, impatiently. “I know you told me so when I was a child, and that you think so still. But I see nothing to make one believe it; but the contrary. What is worn out, drops to pieces and is done with. Whatever is weary goes to sleep and is conscious of nothing[nothing], and so it will be with us and the world about us. We shall soon be weary enough, and it is folly to pretend that we shall therefore go somewhere to be more lively and active than ever. The world is wearing out very fast: so everybody hopes, unless it be the Emperor. Let it fall to pieces then, and be done with, and the sooner the better.”
“It will outlast your unbelief, my child.”
“No, mother; mine is not a fickle,—it is a progressive mind. A year ago, if we had been coming here, I should have expected to see some such sights as Clara apprehends, when she looks fearfully round her. I should have watched for flitting spirits among the rocks, and have sung hymns in the woods, and fancied they were heard and answered, because there are echoes about us. I am wiser now, and shall not go back into the old state. I see things as they are, bleak and bare, and soulless. You will not find me among the worshippers of the Charmed Sea. I leave such worship to the peasants.”
“And another kind of worship to us to whom all things are not bleak and bare. But, Sophia, how far is your mind to be progressive, and why, if there is so soon to be an end of it?”
Sophia was not prepared with a very clear answer to this. She denied that, by progression, she meant anything proceeding regularly, according to a plan. All that she meant was that she once believed a great many things that she did not know, and now she only believed what her senses taught her.
“And do you believe what actually passes before your eyes?” inquired her mother.