So strong is man's craving for personal, individual immortality that hell with its fires would be preferred by many to annihilation. The strongest argument against immortality--weak and ignorant at best--is but a frantic attempt of the mind to prove negatively the existence of what it covets. Fortunately for human happiness in general, FAITH, covers the requirements of millions. They live and die contented, the instinct within them fortified by the teachings of a faith not to be questioned. ---- But what of the men and women who ask for evidence, or at least for plausible argument, proving the reasonableness of immortality? What can be said to please them? Not much, alas! Probably because we are still so undeveloped that it would be, for many reasons, unsafe to let us know how great a future is before us. Strongest in hope is the argument of Charles Fourier, based on what he declared to be a natural law. "Attractions are proportionate to destinies." 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"?