There I would sit or lie
on the thatch for hours. And I would cry: 'Come to me, my mother! I
cannot live without you! Come soon-come soon, before I die of a broken
heart!' That was my cry every night, until worn out with my vigil I
would go back to my room. And she never came, and at last I knew that
she was dead and that we were separated for ever--that there is no
life after death."
His story pierced me to the heart, and without another word I left
him, but I succeeded in making myself believe that grief for his
mother had made him mad, that as a boy he had got these delusions in
his mind and had kept them all his life. Now this recollection haunted
me. Then one day, with my mind in this troubled state, in reading
George Combe's Physiology I came on a passage in which the question of
the desire for immortality is discussed, his contention being that it
is not universal, and as a proof of this he affirms that he himself
had no such desire.
This came as a great shock to me, since up to the moment of reading it
I had in my ignorance taken It for granted that the desire is inherent
in every human being from the dawn of consciousness to the end of
life, that it is our chief desire, and is an instinct of the soul like
that physical instinct of the migratory bird which calls it annually
from the most distant regions back to its natal home.
Pages:
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353