"Attractions are proportionate to destinies."
By this Fourier meant that a universal longing among human
beings was certain proof that their ultimate destiny involved
the fulfilment of the longing. The little girl fondling a doll
foretells maternity. The hectoring boy foretells the soldier's
career. No universal attraction, save with a destiny
proportionate. ----
The human race since it began to think and believe has thought of
and believed in immortality. The half wise declare that belief
in immortality and a spirit world came to savage peoples through
dreams, that it has been kept alive through superstition and the
power of religion. Trivial, certainly, is such an explanation of
a phenomenon as wide as mankind's existence. ----
A very consoling fact for the doubter is this. The strongest
minds born on the earth have almost invariably, at some stage
of development, rejected belief in immortality--only to return
to the belief, or at least to the HOPE, with fuller age and riper
wisdom. That no great mind has seen any positive argument
against the hope of immortality is certainly comforting to all
of us. Intelligence can always refute improbability and
falsehood.
----
What about the nature of immortality? The Indian hopes for dogs
and hunting, the Turk for a life of which the least said the
better.
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