xvii THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 321 



the same feeling peeps out through the conventional 

 phraseology in the story of the old gentleman who, being 

 a churchwarden of (in his own opinion) the most immacu 

 late orthodoxy, was asked by Frederic Myers what he 

 supposed would happen to him after death. After much 

 hesitation he reluctantly admitted that he supposed he 

 would enter into eternal bliss, but he did wish Mr. Myers 

 would not bring up such depressing topics. 



The old gentleman was quite right ; a future life, no 

 matter how gorgeously it is depicted, is, and must be, a 

 depressing subject for people of his sort, comfortable, pro 

 sperous, and self-satisfied. For they feel that before they 

 can make their triumphal entry into Heaven they have to 

 make their exit from a world in which they are far more 

 thoroughly at home than in any heaven they have ever 

 heard of. Hence the difficulty about the rich man s 

 entering the Kingdom of Heaven is not on the celestial 

 side alone. The rich man, for his part, is not in a 

 hurry to get there. And inasmuch as people of this kind 

 set the tone in society, it is no wonder that scientific 

 investigation of immortality is not encouraged. People 

 do not want to hear about it, and above all they do not 

 want to know about it. 



For if once they knew, it would be most inconvenient. 

 They would have to act on their knowledge, and that 

 might upset the habits of a lifetime. And the older one 

 gets the less one likes that. What the decision was 

 would not so much matter ; whether science decided for 

 immortality or for annihilation, the blissful ignorance that 

 enabled one to ignore the subject in ordinary life would 

 be gone for ever. Hence an uncertainty to which we have 

 grown adapted is instinctively or deliberately preferred to 

 a knowledge that would involve the readjustment of 

 ingrained habits. 



It is curious to trace how the various religions, one 

 after the other, effect their submission to this imperious 

 demand of humanity. On the face of it, of course, they 

 start pledged to uphold the entirely contrary thesis that 

 life should include a proper meditation of death and 



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