Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/121

Rh which from classic times onward have rejected the belief in a future existence, appear to have come back by a new road to the very starting-point which perhaps the rudest races of men never quitted. At least this seems true as regards the doctrine of future retribution, which is alike absent from the belief of classes of men at the two extremes of culture. How far the moral standard of life may have been adjusted throughout the higher races with reference to a life hereafter, is a problem difficult of solution, so largely do unbelievers in this second life share ethical principles which have been more or less shaped under its influence. Men who live for one world or for two, have high motives of virtue in common; the noble self-respect which impels them to the life they feel worthy of them; the love of goodness for its own sake and for its immediate results; and beyond this, the desire to do good that shall survive the doer, who will not indeed be in the land of the living to see his work, but who can yet discount his expectations into some measure of present satisfaction. Yet he who believes that his thread of life will be severed once and for ever by the fatal shears, well knows that he wants a purpose and a joy in life, which belong to him who looks for a life to come. Few men feel real contentment in the expectation of vanishing out of conscious existence, henceforth, like the great Buddha, to exist only in their works. To remain incarnate in the memory of friends is something. A few great spirits may enjoy in the reverence of future ages a thousand years or so of 'subjective immortality;' though as for mankind at large, the individual's personal interest hardly extends beyond those who have lived in his time, while his own memory scarce outlives the third and fourth generation. But over and above these secular motives, the belief in immortality extends its powerful influence through life, and culminates at the last hour, when, setting aside the very evidence of their senses, the mourners smile through their tears, and say it is not death but life.