doubt what he thinks! He moves along like water, never anxious if he is
held up or divided, creeping on as the land lies--that is the right way."

Presently he stopped, and looked long at some daffodil blades which were
thrusting up in a sheltered place. "Look at the gray bloom on those
blades," he said; "isn't that perfect? Fancy thinking of that--each of them
so obviously the same thought taking shape, yet each of them different. Do
not you see in them something calm, continuous, active--happy, in fact--at
work; often tripped up and imprisoned, and thwarted--but moving on?" He was
silent a little, and then he said: "This force of _life_--what a
fascinating mystery it is--never dying, never ceasing, always coming back
to shape itself into matter. I wonder sometimes it is not content to exist
alone; but no, it is always back again, arranging matter, manipulating it
into beautiful shapes and creatures, never discouraged; even when the plant
falls ill and begins to pine away, the happy life is within it--languid
perhaps, but just waiting for the release, till the cage in which it has
imprisoned itself is opened, and then--so I believe--back again in an
instant somewhere else.

"I am inclined to believe," he went on, "that that is what we are all
about; it seems to me the only explanation for the fact that we care so
much about the past and the future. If we are creatures of a day, why
should we be interested? The only reason we care about the past is because
we ourselves were there in it; and we care about the future because we
shall be there in it again."

"You mean a sort of re-incarnation," I said.

"That's an ugly word for a beautiful thing," he said. "But this love of
life, this impulse to live, to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves alive,
must surely mean that we have always lived and shall always live. Some
people think that dreadful. They think it is taking liberties with them. If
they are rich and comfortable and dignified, they cannot bear to think that
they may have to begin again, perhaps as a baby in a slum--or they grow
tired, and think they want rest; but we can't rest--we must live again, we
must be back at work; and of course the real hope in it all is that, when
we do anything to make the world happier, it is our own future that we are
working for. Who could care about the future of the world, if he was to be
banished from it for ever? I was reading a book the other day, in which a
wise and a good m