Still the right explanation remains to be made
about prudence. The prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the
most esteemed life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when
little and large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence
suitable for immortality. What is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year
or seventy or eighty years, to wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming back
at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the
clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction
running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself--all else has
reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is of
consequence. Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in
a day or a month, or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of death,
but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect
lifetime. The indirect is always as great and real as the direct. The
spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body. Not one
name of word or deed--not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rum-drinkers--
not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder--no serpentine poison of
those that seduce women--not the foolish yielding of women--not of the
attainment of gain by discreditable means--not any nastiness of appetite--
not any harshness of officers to men, or judges to prisoners, or fathers to
sons, or sons to fathers, or of husbands to wives, or bosses to their
boys--not of greedy looks or malignant wishes--nor any of the wiles
practised by people upon themselves--ever is or ever can be stamped on the
programme, but it is duly realised and returned, and that returned in
further performances, and they returned again.
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