numbers drawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which I have
referred to casually above, and setting aside also the chances and
changes from which even immortality is not exempt, who on the whole
are most likely to live anew in the affectionate thoughts of those
who never so much as saw them in the flesh, and know not even their
names? There is a nisus, a straining in the dull dumb economy of
things, in virtue of which some, whether they will it and know it or
no, are more likely to live after death than others, and who are
these? Those who aimed at it as by some great thing that they would
do to make them famous? Those who have lived most in themselves and
for themselves, or those who have been most ensouled consciously,
but perhaps better unconsciously, directly but more often
indirectly, by the most living souls past and present that have
flitted near them? Can we think of a man or woman who grips us
firmly, at the thought of whom we kindle when we are alone in our
honest daw's plumes, with none to admire or shrug his shoulders, can
we think of one such, the secret of whose power does not lie in the
charm of his or her personality--that is to say, in the wideness of
his or her sympathy with, and therefore life in and communion with
other people? In the wreckage that comes ashore from the sea of
time there is much tinsel stuff that we must preserve and study if
we would know our own times and people; granted that many a dead
charlatan lives long and enters largely and necessarily into our own
lives; we use them and throw them away when we have done with them.
I do not speak of these, I do not speak of the Virgils and Alexander
Popes, and who can say how many more whose names I dare not mention
for fear of offending. They are as stuffed birds or beasts in a
Museum, serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but with
no vivid or vivifying hold upon us. They seem to be alive, but are
not. I am speaking of those who do actually live in us, and move us