Eternity, Heaven, Hell are meaningless words to us. We repeat them,
as we gabble our prayers, telling our smug, self-satisfied selves
that we are miserable sinners. But to the child, the "intelligent
stranger" in the land, seeking to know, they are fearful realities.
If you doubt me, Reader, stand by yourself, beneath the stars, one
night, and SOLVE this thought, Eternity. Your next address shall be
the County Lunatic Asylum.
My actively inclined French friend held cheerier views than are
common of man's life beyond the grave. His belief was that we were
destined to constant change, to everlasting work. We were to pass
through the older planets, to labour in the greater suns.
But for such advanced career a more capable being was needed. No
one of us was sufficient, he argued, to be granted a future
existence all to himself. His idea was that two or three or four of
us, according to our intrinsic value, would be combined to make a
new and more important individuality, fitted for a higher existence.
Man, he pointed out, was already a collection of the beasts. "You
and I," he would say, tapping first my chest and then his own, "we
have them all here--the ape, the tiger, the pig, the motherly hen,
the gamecock, the good ant; we are all, rolled into one.
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