_ The soul has her own currency. She mints her spiritual coinage
and stamps it with the image of some beloved face. With it she
pays her debts, with it she reckons, saying, "This man has worth,
this man is worthless." And in time she forgets its origin; it
seems to her to be a thing unalterable, divine. But the soul can
also have her bankruptcies.
Perhaps she will be the richer in the end. In her agony she
learns to reckon clearly. Fair as the coin may have been, it was
not accurate; and though she knew it not, there were treasures
that it could not buy. The face, however beloved, was mortal, and
as liable as the soul herself to err. We do but shift
responsibility by making a standard of the dead.
There is, indeed, another coinage that bears on it not man's
image but God's. It is incorruptible, and the soul may trust it
safely; it will serve her beyond the stars. But it cannot give us
friends, or the embrace of a lover, or the touch of children, for
with our fellow mortals it has no concern. It cannot even give
the joys we call trivial--fine weather, the pleasures of meat and
drink, bathing and the hot sand afterwards, running, dreamless
sleep. Have we learnt the true discipline of a bankruptcy if we
turn to such coinage as this? Will it really profit us so much if
we save our souls and lose the whole world? _