Our living personality is, as the word implies,
only our mask, and those who still own such a mask as I have
supposed have a living personality. Granted again that the case
just put is an extreme one; still many a man and many a woman has so
stamped him or herself on his work that, though we would gladly have
the aid of such accessories as we doubtless presently shall have to
the livingness of our great dead, we can see them very sufficiently
through the masterpieces they have left us.
As for their own unconsciousness I do not deny it. The life of the
embryo was unconscious before birth, and so is the life--I am
speaking only of the life revealed to us by natural religion--after
death. But as the embryonic and infant life of which we were
unconscious was the most potent factor in our after life of
consciousness, so the effect which we may unconsciously produce in
others after death, and it may be even before it on those who have
never seen us, is in all sober seriousness our truer and more
abiding life, and the one which those who would make the best of
their sojourn here will take most into their consideration.
Pages:
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214