The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

A man should spend his life or, rather, does spend his life in being born.  His life is his birth throes.  But most men miscarry and never come to the true birth at all and some live but a very short time in a very little world and none are eternal.  Still, the life we live beyond the grave is our truest life, and our happiest, for we pass it in the profoundest sleep as though we were children in our cradles.  If we are wronged it hurts us not; if we wrong others, we do not suffer for it; and when we die, as even the Handels and Bellinis and Shakespeares sooner or later do, we die easily, know neither fear nor pain and live anew in the lives of those who have been begotten of our work and who have for the time come up in our room.

An immortal like Shakespeare knows nothing of his own immortality about which we are so keenly conscious.  As he knows nothing of it when it is in its highest vitality, centuries, it may be, after his apparent death, so it is best and happiest if during his bodily life he should think little or nothing about it and perhaps hardly suspect that he will live after his death at all.

And yet I do not know—­I could not keep myself going at all if I did not believe that I was likely to inherit a good average three-score years and ten of immortality.  There are very few workers who are not sustained by this belief, or at least hope, but it may well be doubted whether this is not a sign that they are not going to be immortal—­and I am content (or try to be) to fare as my neighbours.