It is
quite possible to conceive of a man without any hope of personal
immortality, or the continuance of individual identity, whose
future might be clouded, say, by his being the victim of a painful
and incurable disease, and who yet might be a thoroughgoing
optimist with regard to the future of humanity. Nothing in the
world could be so indicative of the rise in the moral and emotional
temperature of the world as the fact that men are increasingly
disposed to sacrifice their own ambitions and their own comfort for
the sake of others, and are willing to suffer, if the happiness of
the race may be increased; and much of the pessimism that prevails
is the pessimism of egotists and individualists, who feel no
interest in the rising tide, because it does not promise to
themselves any increase in personal satisfaction. No man can
possibly hold the continuance of personal identity to be an
indisputable fact, because there is no sort of direct evidence on
the subject; and indeed all the evidence that exists is rather
against the belief than for it.
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