But what of the future? There may be said to be now two principal views. There are some who believe indeed in the immortality of the soul, but not of the individual soul: that our life is continued in that of our children would seem indeed to be the natural deduction from the simile of St. Paul, as that of the grain of wheat is carried on in the plant of the following year.
So long indeed as happiness exists it is selfish to dwell too much on our own share in it. Admit that the soul is immortal, but that in the future state of existence there is a break in the continuity of memory, that one does not remember the present life, and from this point of view is not the importance of identity involved in that of continuous memory? But however this may be according to the general view, the soul, though detached from the body, will retain its conscious identity, and will awake from death, as it does from sleep; so that if we cannot affirm that
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth,
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep," [4]
at any rate they exist somewhere else in space, and we are indeed looking at them when we gaze at the stars, though to our eyes they are as yet invisible.
In neither case, however, can death be regarded as an evil. To wish that youth and strength were unaffected by time might be a different matter.
"But if we are not destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary to all other things, so does she also to life. Now old age is the consummation of life, just as of a play: from the fatigue of which we ought to escape, especially when satiety is super-added." [5]
From this point of view, then, we need
"Weep not for death,
'Tis but a fever stilled,
A pain suppressed,—a fear at rest,
A solemn hope fulfilled.
The moonshine on the slumbering deep
Is scarcely calmer. Wherefore weep?"
"Weep not for death!
The fount of tears is sealed,
Who knows how bright the inward light
To those closed eyes revealed?
Who knows what holy love may fill
The heart that seems so cold and still."
Many a weary soul will have recurred with comfort to the thought that