ng those who have abandoned the belief in
personal immortality."

"That," interposed Wilson, "is surely not the case. One knows of
people who, though they have no belief in survival after death, yet
maintain a perfectly cheerful and healthy attitude towards life.
Harriet Martineau is one that occurs to me. To her, you may remember,
life appeared not less but more worth living when she had become
convinced of her own annihilation at death; and she awaited
with perfect equanimity and calm its imminent approach, not as
a deliverance from a condition which was daily becoming more
intolerable, but as a fitting crown and consummation to a career of
untiring and fruitful activity."

"That," exclaimed Parry with enthusiasm, "is what I call magnanimous!"

"I don't!" retorted Leslie, "I call it simply stupid and
unimaginative."

"Call it what you like," said Wilson; "anyhow it is a position which
can be and has been adopted."

"Yes," I agreed, "but one which, I think, a clearer analysis of the
facts, a franker survey and a more penetrating insight, would make it
increasingly difficult to sustain. And after all, an estimate which is
to endure must be not only magnanimous but reasonable."

"But to her, and to others like her, it did and does appear to be
reasonable. And you ought to admit, I think, that there are cases in
which life is well worth living quite apart from the hypothesis of
personal immortality."

"I am ready to admit," I replied, "that there are people to whom it
seems to be so, but I doubt whether they are very numerous, among
those, I mean, who have reflected on the subject, and whose opinions
alone we need consider. I, at any rate, have commonly found in talking
to people about death--supposing, which is unusual, that they are
willing to talk about it at all--that they adopt one of two views,
either of which presupposes the worthlessness of life, if life, as we
know it, be indeed all"

"What views do you mean?"

"Why, either they believe that death means annihilation, and rejoice
in the prospect as a deliverance from an intolerable evil; or they
hold that there is a life beyond, and that they will find there the
reason and justification for existence which they have never been able
to discover here."

"You forget, surely," said Wilson, "a third point of view, which I
should have thought was as common as either of the others,--that of
those who believe in a life after death, but look forward to it wit