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. The Christian, borrowing his ideas from the writings of the old Hebrews, looks forward to what may be called a solid gold existence—everything made of gold or of something more expensive.
We do not think that religious docility demands implicit belief in any of the published details of our future existence. Gold is not comfortable; jasper would not well replace the green turf.
Is it not more reasonable to assume, since immortality is to be ours, that it is ours now and always has been? We cannot imagine creation of the indestructible. Is it not sensible to take literally that most beautiful invocation: "Thy kingdom come ON EARTH as it is in heaven"?
We know that heaven cannot be above us or hell below; because as we whirl round in each twenty-four hour period those abodes would have to whirl also—quite unreasonable. ——
This earth would make a very good heaven—properly improved and managed. Wipe out human selfishness, and the Sahara and other deserts. Establish universal philanthropy, regulate the climate, confine human manual labor to the pushing of an electric button—all quite possible—and you have the sort of heaven that man would select if left to choose.
Why should we not come back here again and again, taking varying human forms, doing our duty well or badly each time according to our start in life, and finally enjoying perfect terrestrial happiness here as a finished race of immortal beings—immortal in the sense of being indestructible and of possessing the gift of perpetual reincarnation? ——
Now, this earthly reincarnation idea is what we have been driving at since the beginning of this particular article. What is the argument against prior and subsequent existence here? It is this: