Realising that spirit, recognising my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, I cannot understand time. It is eternity now. I am in the mids… - Richard Jefferies

Our bodies are full of unsuspected flaws, handed down it may be for thousands of years, and it is of these that we die, and not of natural decay. Till these are eliminated, or as nearly eliminated as possible, we shall never even know what true old age is like, nor what the true natural limit of human life is. The utmost limit now appears to be about one hundred and five years, but as each person who has got so far has died of weaknesses inherited through thousands of years, it is impossible to say to what number of years he would have reached in a natural state. It seems more than possible that true old age—the slow and natural decay of the body apart from inherited flaw—would be free from very many, if not all, of the petty miseries which now render extreme age a doubtful blessing. If the limbs grew weaker they would not totter; if the teeth dropped it would not be till the last; if the eyes were less strong they would not be quite dim; nor would the mind lose its memory.

I am obliged by facts and incontrovertible argument to conclude that death is not inevitable to the ideal man. He is shaped for a species of physical immortality. The beauty of form of the ideal human being indicates immortality—the contour, the curve, the outline answer to the idea of life. In the course of ages united effort long-continued may eliminate those causes of decay which have grown up in ages past, and after that has been done advance farther and improve the natural state. As a river brings down suspended particles of sand, and depositing them at its mouth forms a delta and a new country; as the air and the rain and the heat of the sun dessicate the rocks and slowly wear down mountains into sand, so the united action of the human race, continued through centuries, may build up the ideal man and woman. Each individual labouring in his day through geological time in front must produce an effect. The instance of Sparta, where so much was done in a few centuries, is almost proof of it.

With the great sun burning over the foam-flaked sea, roofed with heaven—aware of myself, a consciousness forced on me by these things—I feel that thought must yet grow larger and correspond in magnitude of conception to these. But these cannot content me, these Titanic things of sea, and sun, and profundity; I feel that my thought is stronger than they are. I burn life like a torch. The hot light shot back from the sea scorches my cheek—my life is burning in me. The soul throbs like the sea for a larger life. No thought which I have ever had has satisfied my soul.