But after mature thought we resolved to desist from any further
attempt at such transfusion of identity, for sacred reasons of
discretion which the reader will appreciate.
But that this will be done some day (now the way has been made clear),
and also that the inconveniences and possible abuses of such a faculty
will be obviated or minimized by the ever-active ingenuity of mankind,
is to my mind a foregone conclusion.
It is too valuable a faculty to be left in abeyance, and I leave the
probable and possible consequences of its culture to the reader's
imagination--merely pointing out to him (as an inducement to cultivate
that faculty in himself) that if anything can keep us well within the
thorny path that leads to happiness and virtue, it is the certainty that
those who come after us will remember having been ourselves, if only in
a dream--even as the newly-hatched chicken has remembered in its egg the
use of eyes and ears and the rest, out of the fulness of its long
antenatal experience; and more fortunate than the helpless human infant
in this respect, can enter on the business and pleasures of its brief,
irresponsible existence at once!
* * * * *
Wherefore, oh reader, if you be but sound in mind and body, it most
seriously behooves you (not only for the sake of those who come after
you, but your own) to go forth and multiply exceedingly, to marry early
and much and often, and to select the very best of your kind in the
opposite sex for this most precious, excellent, and blessed purpose;
that all your future reincarnations (and hers), however brief, may be
many; and bring you not only joy and peace and pleasurable wonderment
and recreation, but the priceless guerdon of well-earned self-approval!
For whoever remembers having once been you, wakes you for the nonce out
of--nirvana, shall we say? His strength, his beauty, and his wit are
yours; and the felicity he derives from them in this earthly life is for
you to share, whenever this subtle remembrance of you stirs in his
consciousness; and you can never quite sink back again into--nirvana,
till all your future wakers shall cease to be!
It is like a little old-fashioned French game we used to play at Passy,
and which is not bad for a dark, rainy afternoon: people sit all round
in a circle, and each hands on to his neighbor a spill or a
lucifer-match just blown out, but in which a little live spark still
lingers; saying, as he does so--
_"Petit bonhomme vit encore!"_
And he, in whose hand the spark becomes extinct, has to pay forfeit and
retire--"Helas! petit bonhomme n'est plus! .
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