Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/156

 Perhaps in such vague anticipations they try to delude their own consciousness, and fancy that by ignoring and refusing to see it they can escape the inevitable change. After all, this is the healthiest and most invigorating practice of the two. Something of courage seems wanting in man or beast when either is continually looking back. To the philosopher 'a day that is dead' has no value but for the lesson it affords; to the rest of mankind it is inestimably precious for the unaccountable reason that it can never come again."

"Be it so," I answered; "let me vote in the majority. I think with the fools, I honestly confess, but I have also a theory of my own on this subject, which I am quite prepared to hear ridiculed and despised. My supposition is that ideas, feelings, delusions, name them how you will, recur in cycles, although events and tangible