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By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
[Greek: êdu ti tharsaleais ton makron teiein bion elpisin]
Author of THE UPTON LETTERS, FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW, BESIDE STILL WATERS,
THE ALTAR FIRE, THE SCHOOLMASTER, AT LARGE, THE GATE OF DEATH, THE
SILENT ISLE, JOHN RUSKIN, LEAVES OF THE TREE, CHILD OF THE DAWN, PAUL
THE MINSTREL
1912
To MY BEST AND DEAREST FRIEND
HERBERT FRANCIS WILLIAM TATHAM
IN LOVE AND HOPE
I think that a book like the following, which deals with a subject sogreat and so mysterious as our hope of immortality, by means of anallegory or fantasy, needs a few words of preface, in order to clearaway at the outset any misunderstandings which may possibly arise in areader's mind. Nothing is further from my wish than to attempt anyphilosophical or ontological exposition of what is hidden behind theveil of death. But one may be permitted to deal with the subjectimaginatively or poetically, to translate hopes into visions, as I havetried to do.
The fact that underlies the book is this: that in the course of a verysad and strange experience—an illness which lasted for some two years,involving me in a dark cloud of dejection—I came to believepractically, instead of merely theoretically, in the personalimmortality of the human soul. I was conscious, during the whole time,that though the physical machinery of the nerves was out of gear, thesoul and the mind remained, not only intact, but practically unaffectedby the disease, imprisoned, like a bird in a cage, but perfectly free inthemselves, and uninjured by the bodily weakness which enveloped them.This was not all. I was led to perceive that I had been living lifewith an entirely distorted standard of values; I had been ambitious,covetous, eager for comfort and respect, absorbed in trivial dreams andchildish fancies. I saw, in the course of my illness, that what reallymattered to the soul was the relation in which it stood to other souls;that affection was the native air of the spirit; and that anything whichdistracted the heart from the duty of love was a kind of bodilydelusion, and simply hindered the spirit in its pilgrimage.
It is easy to learn this, to attain to a sense of certainty about it,and yet to be unable to put it into practice as simply and frankly asone desires to do! The body grows strong again and reasserts itself; butthe blessed consciousness of a great possibility apprehended and graspedremains.
There came to me, too, a sense that one of the saddest effects ofwhat is practically a widespread disbelief in immortality, whichaffects many people who would nominally disclaim it, is that we thinkof the soul after death as a thing so altered as to be practicallyunrecognisable—as a meek and pious emanation, without qualities or aimsor passions or traits—as a sort of amiable and weak-kneed sacristan inthe temple of God; and this is the unhappy result of our so often makingreligion a pursuit apart from life—an occupation, not an atmosphere; sothat it seems impious to think of the departed spirit as interested inanything but a vague species of liturgical exercise.
I read the other day the account of the death-bed of a great statesman,which was writ