Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. - Christopher Isherwood

"The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli."

As the result of his talks with Gerald and with Gerald’s friend and teacher, the Hindu monk Prabhavananda, Christopher would find himself able to believe — as a possibility, at least — that an eternal impersonal presence (call it "the soul" if you like) exists within all creatures and is other than the mutable non-eternal "person." He would then feel that all his earlier difficulties had been merely semantic; that he could have been converted to this belief at any time in his life, if only someone had used the right words to explain it to him. Now, I doubt this. I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it. But, although Christopher wasn’t yet aware that he needed such a belief, he may have been feeling the need subconsciously. This would explain his recently increased hostility toward what he thought of as "religion" — the version of Christianity he had been taught in his childhood. Perhaps he was afraid that he would be forced to accept it, at last, after nearly fifteen years of atheism.

From his heart, he thanks these young animals for their beauty. And they will never know what they have done to make this moment marvelous to him, and life itself less hateful.…