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CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

Balfour Stewart
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Summary

“L'immortalité de l'âme est une chose qui nous importe si fort, et qui nous touche si profoundément, qu'il faut avoir perdu tout sentiment pour être dans l'indifférence de savoir ce qui en est.”

—Pascal.

“For he should persevere until he has attained one of two things; either he should discover or learn the truth about them, or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life—not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him.”

—Plato'sPhædo; translated by Jowett.

The great mass of mankind have always believed in some fashion in the immortality of the soul; but it is certain that we may find disbelievers in this doctrine who yet retain the nobler attributes of humanity. It may, however, be questioned if it be possible even to imagine the great bulk of our race to have lost their belief in a future state of existence, and yet to have retained the virtues of civilised and well-ordered communities.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Unseen Universe
Physical Speculations on a Future State
 , pp. 1 - 43
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1875

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