Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/46

 deal with God direct than with his saints. If we had acquired the habit of doing so, we shouldn't feel embarrassed when God is not officially represented. With our souls in our own keeping, we could not be so cruelly surprised.

"As a matter of fact, priests and parsons know no more than we do about life and death. Truth lies deep within ourself, and the most that any ambassador of heaven can do is to direct our gaze inward. Although we know nothing, we have been born with an instinctive belief that the value of life cannot be measured merely in terms of the number of years one remains a living person. We can't help feeling that every individual life contributes to an unknown total of Life. Our human misfortune is that we see individuals too big and Life itself too small. We forget we are like bees, whose glory is that each contributes, namelessly, a modicum to the hive and to the honey that gives point to their existence. We do wrong to attach tragic importance to the death of even our nearest friend, for their dying is a phase of their existence in the larger sense, just as sleeping is a phase of our twenty-four hour existence.

"The real tragedy is that we build up our lives upon something which is by its nature impermanent. The wisest of us are too prone to live for the sake of a person, and if that person suddenly ceases to exist the ground is swept from under us. To find a new footing is difficult, but possible, and it may even be good for us to be obliged to reach out in a new