'Is that not very hard, Sir?'
'I mean, that is the real sense of what they will say. In
the actual language of the Lost, the words will be differ-
ent, no doubt. One will say he has always served his
country right or wrong; and another that he has sacrificed
everything to his Art; and some that they've never been
taken in, and some that, thank God, they've always
looked after Number One, and nearly all, that, at least
they've been true to themselves.'
'And the Saved?'
'Ah, the Saved...what happens to them is best
described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when
they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they
look back, to have been a well; and where present experi-
ence saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records
that the pools were full of water.'
'Then those people are right to say that Heaven and
Hell are only states of mind?'
'Hush,' he said sternly. 'Do not blaspheme. Hell is a
state of mind - ye never said a truer word. And every
state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the crea-
ture within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end,
Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is real-
ity itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can
be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable
remains.'
'But there is a real choice after death? My Roman
Catholic friends would be surprised, for to them the souls in
Purgatory are already saved. And my Protestant friends
would like it no better, for they'd say that the tree lies as it falls.'
'They're both right, maybe. Do not fash yourself with
such questions. Ye cannot fully understand the relations
of choice and Time till you are beyond both. And ye were
not brought here to study such curiosities. What concerns
you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch
them making.'
'Well, Sir,' I said, 'That also needs explaining. What do
they choose, these souls who go back (I have yet seen no
others)? And how can they choose it?'
'Milton was right,' said my Teacher. 'The choice of
every lost soul can be expressed in the words "Better to
reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." There is always
something they insist on keeping even at the price of mis-
ery. There is always something they prefer to joy - that is,
to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that
would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was
sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life
it has a hundred fine names - Achilles' wrath and Corio-
lanus' grandeur, Revenge and Injured Merit and Self-
Respect and Tragic Greatness and Proper Pride.'
'Then is no one lost through the undignified vices, Sir?
Through mere sensuality?'
'Some are, no doubt. The sensualist, I'll allow ye,
begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one.
His sin is the less. But the time comes on when, though
the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer
and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come
that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unap-
peasable lust and would not have it taken from him. He'd
fight to death to keep it. He'd like well to be able to
scratch; but even when he can scratch no more he'd rather
itch than not.'
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