CHAPTER VI - Of the Desire of Immortality

Summary

That wish, universally expressed in every variety of form, of remaining in the memory of our fellow-creatures after our passage from the present scene, has rightly been adduced as evidence of the desire of immortality, and has sometimes been explained as being founded on an instinctive belief that we are destined to it by the Creator.

The hope of remaining embalmed in the fond recollection of those we held most dear in life, and even of being remembered by our more immediate descendants, has something in it nearly connected with self; but the wish for more extended reputation,—the desire that our name should pass in after times from mouth to mouth, cherished and admired by those whose applause is won by no personal recollections: or the still more fervent aspirations, that we may stamp indelibly on the age we live in some mark of our individual existence which shall form an epoch in the history of man: these hopes, these longings, receive no interpretation from the all-dominant principle of self; unless indeed we suppose the sentient principle of our nature not merely existing, but also conscious of, and gratified by, the earthly immortality it had achieved. Yet the more distant and the higher the objects we pursue, the less is it possible to suppose the mind, so occupied on earth, can, in another stage of its existence, derive pleasure from such perceptions.