Its devout crusaders will vow themselves
in thousands with a great vow to live long. But there is one comfort:
they won't.
For, indeed, the weakness of this worship of mere natural life (which
is a common enough creed to-day) is that it ignores the paradox of
courage and fails in its own aim. As a matter of fact, no men would be
killed quicker than the Methuselahites. The paradox of courage is that a
man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. And
in the very case I have quoted we may see an example of how little the
theory of Methuselahism really inspires our best life. For there is one
riddle in that case which cannot easily be cleared up. If it was the
man's religion to live as long as he could, why on earth was he
enlisting as a soldier?
SPIRITUALISM.
I Have received a letter from a gentleman who is very indignant at what
he considers my flippancy in disregarding or degrading Spiritualism. I
thought I was defending Spiritualism; but I am rather used to being
accused of mocking the thing that I set out to justify. My fate in most
controversies is rather pathetic. It is an almost invariable rule that
the man with whom I don't agree thinks I am making a fool of myself, and
the man with whom I do agree thinks I am making a fool of him.
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