When we grumble about the vanity of all human things, inasmuch as even
the noblest works are not eternal but must become sooner or later as
though they had never been, we should remember that the world, so far as
we can see, was made to enjoy rather than to last. Come-and-go pervades
everything of which we have knowledge, and though great things go more
slowly, they are built up of small ones and must fare as that which makes
them.
Are we to have our enjoyment of Handel and Shakespeare weakened because a
day will come when there will be no more of either Handel or Shakespeare
nor yet of ears to hear them? Is it not enough that they should stir
such countless multitudes so profoundly and kindle such intense and
affectionate admiration for so many ages as they have done and probably
will continue to do? The life of a great thing may be so long as
practically to come to immortality even now, but that is not the point.
The point is that if anything was aimed at at all when things began to
shape or to be shaped, it seems to have been a short life and a merry
one, with an extension of time in certain favoured cases, rather than a
permanency even of the very best and noblest. And, when one comes to
think of it, death and birth are so closely correlated that one could not
destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is
extinction that makes creation possible.
If, however, any work is to have long life it is not enough that it
should be good of its kind. Many ephemeral things are perfect in their
way. It must be of a durable kind as well.