But alas for them, as yet! They haven't got the memory of the eye and ear, and without that no speck of spinal marrow will avail; they must be content to wait, like you. The blind and deaf? Oh yes; _la bas_, it is all right for the poor deaf-mutes and born blind of the earth; they can remember with the past eyes and ears of all the rest. Besides, it is no longer _they_. There is no _they_! That is only a detail. * * * * * You must try and realize that it is just as though all space between us and the sun and stars were full of little specks of spinal marrow, much too small to be seen in any microscope--smaller than anything in the world. All space is full of them, shoulder to shoulder--almost as close as sardines in a box--and there is still room for more! Yet a single drop of water would hold them all, and not be the less transparent. They all remember having been alive on earth or elsewhere, in some form or other, and each knows all the others remember. I can only compare it to that. Once all that space was only full of stones, rushing, whirling, meeting, and crushing together, and melting and steaming in the white-heat of their own hurry. But now there's a crop of something better than stones, I can promise you! It goes on gathering, and being garnered and mingled and sifted and winnowed--the precious, indestructible harvest of how many millions of years of life! * * * * * And this I know: the longer and more strenuously and completely one lives one's life on earth the better for all. It is the foundation of everything. Though if men could guess what is in store for them when they die, without also knowing _that_, they would not have the patience to live--they wouldn't wait! For who would fardels bear? They would just put stones in their pockets, as you did, and make for the nearest pond. They mustn't! * * * * * Nothing is lost--nothing! From the ineffable, high, fleeting thought a Shakespeare can't find words to express, to the slightest sensation of an earthworm--nothing! Not a leaf's feeling of the light, not a loadstone's sense of the pole, not a single volcanic or electric thrill of the mother earth. All knowledge must begin on earth for _us_. It is the most favored planet in this poor system of ours just now, and for a few short millions of years to come. There are just a couple of others, perhaps three; but they are not of great consequence. 'Il y fait trop chaud--ou pas assez!' They are failures. The sun, the father sun, _le bon gros pere_, rains life on to the mother earth. A poor little life it was at first, as you know--grasses and moss, and little wriggling, transparent things--all stomach; it is quite true! That is what we come from--Shakespeare, and you, and I! * * * * *