“Most peoples, barbarians even, believed in some sort of a future state, in the principle of good and evil, and of rewards and punishments. There needs no argument then to account for the insatiable longing to pry into futurity, and to discover its hidden mysteries. The same idea unsettled the minds of former generations, nor can it be truthfully said to have disappeared before the vaunted wisdom of this utilitarian age. Like all forbidden fruit, this may be said to be the subject of greatest anxiety to weak human kind.”
