"Every man who lives, and who has a personality, has something to do with
many men whom he has never seen, whom he will never see. Messengers go
from him as carrier-pigeons go from a ship. He may live alone, as a ship
is alone in mid-ocean, but the messengers are winged, and their wings are
strong. They fly high and they fly far, and wherever they pause and rest,
that man has left a mark, has stamped himself, has uttered himself, has
planted a seed of his will. Have you a religion?"
Valentine stopped abruptly after uttering this question, and waited for
an answer. It was characteristic enough.
"What?" said the lady of the feathers, staring wide-eyed.
"I say, have you a religion?"
"Not I. How can I when I don't go to no church?"
"That is, no doubt, a convincing proof of heathendom. And yet I have a
religion that never leads me to a church door. My religion is will, my
gospel is the gospel of influence, and my god is power. Will binds the
world into a net, whose strands are like iron. Will dies if it is weak,
but if it is strong enough it becomes practically immortal. But, though
it lives itself, it has the power to kill others. It can murder a soul in
a man or a woman, and throw it into the grave to decay and go to dust,
and in the man it can create a soul diametrically opposite to the corpse,
and the world will say the man is the same; but he is not the same.
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