Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/140

128 I met one who believed what you believe, and would tell it me as you have told it me. Will you let me ask you one more question?' 'Twenty, if you care to ask them.'

'Have you not in you a feeling, a strange unaccountable, but nevertheless undeniable feeling, that you, you—your individuality, as you said,—cannot possibly be destroyed?' 'You mean have I, what is called the instinct of immortality?—No: I have not,—now. When I first began to think about these things, my mind was strongly prepossessed in favour of immortality, and consequently this instinct soon developed itself from its passive unconsciousness into active consciousness, and I held fast to the idea of immortality when everything else, save belief in a deity, had gone. It was not till after more than three years of thoughtfulness and study, that I learnt that my desire for immortality was only a synonym for my selfishness, and, having learnt this, I began to see, too, the complete needlessness, though as complete naturalness, of that desire. I determined to devote myself to benefiting, as far as I could, my fellow men. Whether this was a result from, or parallel to, my loss of all belief in immortality, it would be difficult to say. At any rate, there are the two facts contemporaneous.'

'And do you not believe in a deity either?' 'I cannot answer you; for I do not know. I am content, seeing a world full of ignorance and woe, to strive to lessen however little of that ignorance, knowing that thereby I shall lessen a corresponding amount of that woe. This seems to me the one undeniable duty of each of us: to make the earth better for our having been in it.'

I answered nothing. We walked on together in silence till we came to the hotel door. Then, as he half-turning faced me, I held out my hand for his, and when it was in mine, pressed it, looking into his eyes that looked into mine, and I said:

'Thank you.'

We passed to other matters; for what more was to be said or done as regarded this?