all we say to Miss Cobbe's
contention that duty will 'grow grey and cold' without God and
immortality? Yes, for those with whom duty is a matter of selfish
calculation, and who are virtuous only because they look for a 'golden
crown' in payment on the other side the grave. Those of us who find
joy in right-doing, who work because work is useful to our fellows,
who live well because in such living we pay our contribution to the
world's wealth, leaving earth richer than we found it--we need no
paltry payment after death for our life's labour, for in that labour
is its own 'exceeding great reward.'"[18] But did any one yearn for
immortality, that "not all of me shall die"? "Is it true that Atheism
has no immortality? What is true immortality? Is Beethoven's true
immortality in his continued personal consciousness, or in his
glorious music deathless while the world endures? Is Shelley's true
life in his existence in some far-off heaven, or in the pulsing
liberty his lyrics send through men's hearts, when they respond to the
strains of his lyre? Music does not die, though one instrument be
broken; thought does not die, though one brain be shivered; love does
not die, though one heart's strings be rent; and no great thinker dies
so long as his thought re-echoes through the ages, its melody the
fuller-toned the more human brains send its music on. Not only to the
hero and the sage is this immortality given; it belongs to each
according to the measure of his deeds; world-wide life for world-wide
service; straitened life for straitened work; each reaps as he sows,
and the harvest is gathered by each in his rightful order."[19]

This longing to leave behind a name that will live among men by right
of service done them, this yearning for human love and approval that
springs naturally from the practical and intense realisation of human
brotherhood--these will be found as strong motives in the breasts of
the most earnest men and women who have in our generation identified
themselves with the Freethought cause. They shine through the written
and spoken words of Charles Bradlaugh all through his life, and every
friend of his knows how often he has expressed the longing that "when
the grass grows green over my grave, men may love me a little for the
work I tried to do."

Needless to say that, in the many controversies in which I took part,
it was often urged against me that such motives were insufficient,
that they appealed only to n