"Do you remember the name of that man we knew," said Adam one day,
"who wrote a book to prove the immortality of the body? He did prove
that various people had lived well on to two hundred years. If we were
sure of that, we might get the earth very fairly started."
Robin laughed. "We are not apparently growing any older," she said;
"but we can hardly count on more than a hundred years each."
"There is one thing you haven't taken into consideration," said Adam.
"Our children would be several thousand years ahead of the original
children of the Garden; they would be further along than you and I in
a good many ways."
"No," she said, "I haven't forgotten, but I do not know how much of a
load they would bring with them into the world. We called it heredity,
the Hindoos called it karma, and, though that is different, educators
called it the recapitulation theory."
Adam shook his head. "I understand heredity," he said, "but karma and
recapitulation are too much for me."
"Karma is our heritage from former existences," she answered, "that
may have been lived here or elsewhere. It is the sum of our past, good
and bad. It is based on a belief in reincarnation, and it is the law
that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. It is justice
untempered by mercy, and it is at variance with the doctrine of
vicarious atonement, though one may believe it and worship Christ as
the highest type of love the world has ever known. Naturally, it does
not appeal to the people who are willing to let some one bear the
cross for them, and yet I have wondered whether, if we were sure we
should not gather figs from thistles, we should sow the thistles so
freely. The recapitulation theory makes the child pass through the
evolutionary stages of the nation or nations he represents. It has a
kind of seven ages of man of its own, and brings him down through all
phases,--the savage, the hunter, the explorer, the conqueror, the
builder. I don't pretend fully to understand it. I heard one of its
ablest exponents say once, 'The soul of the German nation is in the
German boy.' Heredity curses or blesses, sometimes both. Before any of
these theories prospective parents might well hesitate."
"Which do you believe?" asked Adam, curiously.
She reflected a moment. "A little of all three; not all of any of
them; one would have to be a profound student to understand fully what
their adherents claim for them. Heredity plays strange freaks now and
then. It is easier to account for Abraham Lincoln by the second theory
than by either of the others. His shiftless, untidy mother and
commonplace father do not explain such a soul as his; nor was there
any reversion in his childhood to the original savage instincts that
make children dismember grasshoppers--rather the reverse. I like
better to think that, like that other Deliverer, who was a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief, he came to do the will of his and
our Father which art in heaven,--came gladly, freely, knowing the end
from the beginning."
Adam sat up suddenly and looked at her with startled eyes. "Then you
think--you mean--you don't believe--surely you don't believe we have
anything to do with our coming here?"
She smiled. "Surely I do. Our coming is sad enough when we do it
voluntarily. It would be quite intolerable to have existence thrust
upon us. Besides, it seems blasphemous to me to believe that God has
given to every human being the power to bestow an eternal existence.
The responsibility is great enough when it is simply a matter of so
living that noble souls may seek to be born of us, and undertaking to
give them sound minds and bodies."
Adam looked unconvinced and troubled. "Where on earth did you get all
that?" he asked.
"Well, it is to my mind only an elaboration of Descartes' 'I think,
therefore I am.' I am, presupposes that I have been, and will be. If
you can't destroy one drop of water, you can't destroy me. If you drop
the water on red-hot iron, it instantly becomes an imperceptible mist,
the mere ghost of itself, but it will ultimately become fluid again.
It seems to me that the scientific fact gives a sound basis for the
psychologic probability."
"But think of all the miserable human beings born daily. Do you think
any one would choose such surroundings?"
"You and I never wanted to go anywhere badly enough to crowd ourselves
under the cow-catcher, or upon the trucks, but there were those who
did. We didn't want to see the parade badly enough to stand on the
street corner for hours; but you worked your way through college, and
we have both sat in the top gallery to hear 'Tannhäuser.' We were
willing to put up with the whips and scorns, which is another way of
saying the garlic and tobacco, for the sake of the music. In any event
the experiment was of brief duration. No one gets more than a fragment
in an ordinary lifetime."
"If you think that," said Adam, "I can't see that there is any
responsibility about it. We should not thrust life on any one."
"True," she assented. "Your position is unassailable, but still it
seems to me the responsibility remains. In the first place, granting
that my hypothesis is true, how can we tell whether to live is gain?
How do we know that the next generation would be better and stronger
than we are? Moreover, I only give this to you as my idea. I do not
say it is true; I believe it to be so, but I do not know anything
whatsoever about it. I can't prove it, and it may be transcendental
rubbish. I rather imagine you think it is."
"Not exactly that," he said, coloring and laughing, "but certainly it
is rather amazing when one hears it for the first time. I daresay I
shall come to believe it too. So far as I can see, you are about as
unorthodox as I am."
"I have times of relapse," she said. "Then I think we are being
tempted like the first Adam and Eve. They were commanded to multiply
and reign. You and I wouldn't ask anything better, but as a rule one's
duty is not attractive. It seems to me just as likely that we are to
prove that the lesson is learned, and a man and woman may love each
other unselfishly and nobly, foregoing their own desires to save
others. Under the old dispensation it was said, 'Greater love hath no
man than this;' is it not possible now that the greatest love is that
which lays down its life untransmitted? If Christ could pray that the
cup of suffering and death might pass from Him, dare we press the
bitter draught of being to other lips?"
"Dare we dash the full goblet of joy and opportunity from them?" asked
Adam, gravely.
"I wish I knew," she said. "I wish I knew!"
"Have you ever thought what it will mean," he said, "if we adopt the
other alternative? Have you thought of the desolation and loneliness
of growing old and helpless and finally--" He stopped, and she threw
out her hands as if to ward off the thoughts he called before her.
"Oh, yes, yes, I have thought, and it is terrible. I keep remembering
a picture I saw in the French Exhibit. It was of a man and a woman;
the woman was dead, and he had dug her grave, his broken sword lay at
his side, and he had wrapped her in his coat, and begun to cover her
over. He could not go on, and knelt, looking at her with a despair on
his face that has haunted me ever since. The name, Manon Lescaut,
meant nothing to me then, but the story of the picture was enough by
itself. All last year I kept seeing that terrible picture. Sometimes
it was you, sometimes it was I, that dug the grave and went mad
looking into it."
"I should not bury you," said Adam, grimly. "I should carry you to the
cliff and take you in my arms and jump. The sea is deep and cruel
there."
"Sometimes," she hesitated a moment, then went on,--"sometimes I think
that would be the best way for us now, I mean if we decide we have no
right to be happy in the old way; for I should be afraid we could not
always be strong."
"Very well," he answered; "when we decide, it shall be literally life
or death."