to have done with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. I neither wish to live longer here nor to find life again elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it.[9] It is no part of the purpose of this article to discuss the _truth_ of the doctrine that there is no God, and that death terminates human consciousness. Nor yet do I question whether a high sense of loyalty to what is understood to be truth may not make it appear to any one holding such doctrines that he is under the obligation to publish them frankly to the world. Many a man who is an Atheist as regards God holds (what many believers in Him lack) a noble faith in Truth _as_ Truth, a firm conviction that nothing can be better than Truth, and that, as Carlyle said, “To nothing but error can any truth be dangerous.” It is not, then, the holding of such views as those above quoted, nor yet their frank publication and defence, wherewith we are now concerned; but with the _tone of exultation_ with which they are announced, the disregard and contempt which are manifested for the dearest hopes, the purest aspirations, of the great mass of mankind. Magnanimity has two phases. We may be magnanimous on our own account,--brave, calm, and self-reliant in the face of things which appall feebler souls. Of this sort of personal magnanimity, this remarkable woman has given a very fine example. Here are the words she wrote twenty years after the foregoing pages, in her last letter to her friend: I cannot think of any future as at all probable except the annihilation from which some people recoil with so much horror.... For my part, I have no objection to such an extinction. I well remember the passion wherewith W. E. Forster said to me, “I had rather be damned than annihilated.”... I have no wish for any further experience, nor have I any fear of it.[10]...