It is very difficult to determine, by any exercise of the intellect
or imagination, what fears would remain to us if we were freed from
the dominion of the body. All material fears and anxieties would
come to an end; we should no longer have any poverty to dread, or
any of the limitations or circumscriptions which the lack of the
means of life inflicts upon us; we should have no ambitions left,
because the ambitions which centre on influence--that is, upon the
desire to direct and control the interests of a nation or a group
of individuals--have no meaning apart from the material framework
of civil life. The only kind of influence which would survive would
be the influence of emotion, the direct appeal which one who lives
a higher and more beautiful life can make to all unsatisfied souls,
who would fain find the way to a greater serenity of mood. Even
upon earth we can see a faint foreshadowing of this in the fact
that the only personalities who continue to hold the devotion and
admiration of humanity are the idealists. Men and women do not make
pilgrimages to the graves and houses of eminent jurists and
bankers, political economists or statisticians: these have done
their work, and have had their reward.
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