h
inexpressible fear of the possible evils which it may contain."

"True," I said, "but such fear, I suppose, is a reflex of actual
experience, and implies, does it not, a vivid sense of the evils of
existence as we know it? So that these people, too, I should maintain,
have not really found life satisfactory, or they would look forward
with hope rather than fear to the possibility of Its continuance."

"But in their case, at any rate, the hypothesis of personal
immortality is an aggravation, not a remedy, of the evil."

"No doubt; but I have been assuming throughout that the hypothesis
involves the realization of that Good which, without it, we recognize
to be unattainable; and it is only in that sense, and from that point
of view, that I have introduced it."

"Well," he persisted, "considering how improbable the hypothesis is,
I should be very loth to admit that it is one which it is practically
necessary to adopt. And I still maintain that most people do not
require it--ordinary simple people, I mean, who do their work and make
no fuss about it."

"Perhaps not," I replied, "for it is characteristic of such people
to make no hypothesis at all, but to adopt for the moment any view
suggested by the state of their spirits. But I believe that if ever
you can get a man, no matter how plain and unsophisticated, to reflect
fairly upon his own experience, and to look impartially at the facts
all round, abstracting from all bias of habit and mood and prejudice,
he will admit that if it be true that the individual is extinguished
at death, together with all his possibilities of realizing Good,
then life cannot rationally be judged to be worth the living, however
imperatively we may be compelled to continue to live it."

"But it Is just that imperative compulsion," cried Parry, "on which I
rely! That seems to me the justification of life--the fact that we are
forced to live! I trust that instinct more than all the inclination in
the world!"

"But," I said, "when you say that you trust the instinct, do you mean
that you judge it to be good?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Then in trusting the instinct you are really trusting your reason,
which judges the instinct to be good, or, if not your reason, the
faculty, whatever it be, which judges of Good. And the only difference
between us is, that I try to ascertain what we do really believe to
be good, whereas you accept and cling to a particular judgment about
Good, without any