"No doubt," I replied, "and so are all questions--if only we could know. But I was assuming that this is one of the things we do not know."
"But," he said, "it is one we are always coming to know. Every year we are learning more and more about the course and destiny of mankind."
"Should you say, then," I asked, "that we are nearer to knowing whether or no the soul is immortal?"
He looked at me in sheer amazement; and then, "What a question!" he cried. "I should say that we have long known that it isn't"
"Then," I said, "if so, we know that the Good cannot be realized."
"What!" he exclaimed. "I had not understood that your conception of the Good involved the idea of personal immortality."
"I am almost afraid it does," I replied, "but I am not quite sure. We have already touched upon the point, if you remember, when we were considering whether we must regard the Good as realizable in ourselves, or only in some generation of people to come. And we thought then that it must somehow be realizable in us."
"But we did not see at the time what that would involve, though I was afraid all along of something of the kind."
"Well," I said, "for fear you should think you have been cheated, we will reconsider the point; and first, if you like, we will suppose that we mean by the Good of some future generation, still retaining for Good the signification we gave to it. The question then of whether or no the Good can be realized, will be the question whether or no it is possible that at some future time all individuals should be knit together in that ultimate relation which we called love."
"But," cried Leslie, "the love was to be eternal! So that _their_ souls at least would have to be immortal; and if theirs, why not ours?"
I looked at Wilson; and "Well," I said, "what are we to say?"
"For my part," he replied, "I have nothing to say. I consider the whole idea of immortality illegitimate."
"Yet on that," I said, "hangs the eternal nature of our Good. But may we retain, perhaps, the all-comprehensiveness?"
"How could we!" cried Leslie, "for it is only the individuals who happened to be alive who could be comprehended so long as they were alive."
"Another glory shorn from our Good!" I said. "Still, let us hold fast to what we may! Shall we say that if the Good is to be realized the individuals then alive, so long as they are alive, will be bound together in this relation?"