“Please do,” said Frank.
He sat down, fixing upon her his piercing eyes, and Miss Ley, as though she had given the matter frequent thought, spoke fluently, with ordered ideas and balanced phrase.
“You know, I was reared on the strictest Evangelical principles to believe certain dogmas on pain of eternal damnation, but at twenty, why I scarcely can tell, all I had learnt fell away from me. Faith presumably is a matter of temperament; good-will has nothing to do with it, and when I look back on my ignorance I am astounded that such ill-considered reasons sufficed to destroy the prejudices of so many years. I was certain then that no God existed; but now I make a point of being certain of nothing: it saves trouble. Besides, each time you make up your mind you rob yourself of a subject for cogitation. But theoretically I cannot help thinking that for a quite reasonable view of life it is necessary to be convinced that no immortality of the soul exists.”
“How can a man lead his life uniformly on the earth if he is disturbed by the thought of another life to come?” broke in Frank eagerly. “God is a force throwing man’s centre of gravity out of his own body.”
“We agreed, Frank, that I was to expound my views,” answered Miss Ley, with some asperity, for interruption she never suffered easily.
“Forgive me,” said Frank, smiling.
“But I agree that your remark, though ill-timed, was not without point,” she proceeded deliberately. “When man is assured that the insignificant planet on which he lives, and the time, are everything so far as he is individually concerned, he can look about him and order himself according to the surroundings. He is a chess-player with his definite number of pieces, capable of definite moves; and none asks why the castle must run straight, but the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rules, careless of what may befall when the game is finished, the wise man plays—not to win, for that is impossible, but to make a good fight of it. And if he is wise indeed he will never forget that, after all, it is but a game, and therefore not to be taken too seriously.”
Miss Ley paused, thinking it high time to give Frank opportunity for some remark, but since he remained silent she went on slowly.
“I think the most valuable thing I have learnt in my life is that there is so much to say on both sides of every question that there is little to choose between them. It has made me tolerant, so that I can listen with equal interest to you and to my cousin Algernon. After all, how can I tell whether Truth has one shape only, or many? In how many errors does she linger with a smiling face and insufficient raiment; in what contrary and irreconcilable places does she dwell, more wilful than April winds, more whimsical than the Will-o-the-wisp! My art and science is to live. It is an argument of weak men to say that all things are vanity because the pleasure of them is ephemeral: it may console the beggar to look upon the tomb of kings, but then he must be a fool as well. The pleasures of life are illusion, but when pessimists complain that human delights are negligible because they are unreal, they talk absurdly; for reality none knows, and few care about: our only interest is with illusion. How foolish is it to say that the mirage in the desert is not beautiful merely because it is an atmospheric effect!”
“Is life, then, nothing but a voyage which a man takes, bound nowhither and tossed perpetually upon a treacherous sea?”