What was the meaning of life? What was beyond it after death? Would
immortality, if such there were, be worth having? Men in countless,
unthinkable millions, had lived, and loved, and lost, and passed on. Did
immortality carry with it pain and suffering for them? If not, did it
carry happiness and balm? To hell with religions and philosophies, he
thought; they were all a parcel of fairy tales to drug men's minds and
keep them tame; and he glared impotently at the pitiless heavens, as if
he would defy gods, and devils, and men. He would be free--free in mind,
in thought, and unhampered by unrealities!
No. Men had the shaping of their own lives. Pride would be his ally. He
would lock up this episode in his heart, and at the end of time for him,
there would be an end of the pain and the regret, when he was laid among
the myriad millions of men of all the countless ages since man had
being.
This was immortality; to be forever robed in the dreamless draperies of
eternal oblivion, rather than have eternal life, with all its
torments--mingling with the legions of the past, and with mother
earth--the dust of success and happiness indistinguishable from the dust
of failure and despair.
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