That there is a life after death is as palpable as that there is a life
before death—see the influence that the dead have over us—but this life
is no more eternal than our present life.
Shakespeare and Homer may live long, but they will die some day, that is
to say, they will become unknown as direct and efficient causes. Even so
God himself dies, for to die is to change and to change is to die to what
has gone before. If the units change the total must do so also.
As no one can say which egg or seed shall come to visible life and in its
turn leave issue, so no one can say which of the millions of now visible
lives shall enter into the afterlife on death, and which have but so
little life as practically not to count. For most seeds end as seeds or
as food for some alien being, and so with lives, by far the greater
number are sterile, except in so far as they can be devoured as the food
of some stronger life. The Handels and Shakespeares are the few seeds
that grow—and even these die.
And the same uncertainty attaches to posthumous life as to pre-lethal.
As no one can say how long another shall live, so no one can say how long
or how short a time a reputation shall live. The most unpromising
weakly-looking creatures sometimes live to ninety while strong robust men
are carried off in their prime. And no one can say what a man shall
enter into life for having done. Roughly, there is a sort of moral
government whereby those who have done the best work live most
enduringly, but it is subject to such exceptions that no one can say
whether or no there shall not be an exception in his own case either in
his favour or against him.
In this uncertainty a young writer had better act as though he had a
reasonable chance of living, not perhaps very long, but still some little
while after his death. Let him leave his notes fairly full and fairly
tidy in all respects, without spending too much time about them. If they
are wanted, there they are; if not wanted, there is no harm done. He
might as well leave them as anything else. But let him write them in
copying ink and have the copies kept in different places.