desire for eternal life. If it were fulfilled, man would become thoroughly sick of living eternally, and yearn for death.” [311F-LER: p. 277]
[312F-LER: p. 279]
“ … even revolutionaries do not wish to progress ad infinitum, they have specific aims; once these are achieved, they halt and seek stability. Thus in each generation new young men take up the thread of history where the old progressives, having attained the goal of their desires and with it the limits of their being and thinking, leave off.” [312F-LER: p. 279]
[313F-LER: p. 279]
“No more than man has an unlimited drive toward knowledge and perfection, no more has he an unlimited, insatiable lust for happiness, which the good things of this earth cannot assuage. Men, even those who believe in immortality, are perfectly content with earthly life, at least as long as all goes well, as long as they do not want for necessities, as long as no special, grave misfortune strikes them. They do not want a radically different life, they would merely like to see the evils of this life done away with.” [313F-LER: p. 279]
[314F-LER: p. 280]
“ … a reasonable and natural striving for happiness does not exceed the nature of man, it does not surpass the bounds of this life, of this earth; it aims merely at eliminating those evils and limitations that can actually be eliminated, that are not necessary, that are not an essential part of life. (…) As to the desires that do not go beyond man and his nature, that are grounded not only in empty imagination or unnatural indulgence of the emotions, but in a real need and drive of human nature, they find their fulfillment within the human race and in the course of human history.” [314F-LER: p. 280]
[315F-LER: p. 280]
“But there is a history of human civilization: why, even animals and plants change and develop so much in the course of time that we can no longer discover and demonstrate their ancestry!” [315F-LER: p. 280]
[316F-LER: p. 281]
“Those human desires that are not imaginary and fantastic are fulfilled in the course of history, of the future. Many desires which today remain mere desires will someday be fulfilled; innumerable things which the presumptuous champions of present-day religious dogmas and institutions, present-day social and political conditions, regard as impossible, will one day be reality; innumerable things that today we do not know but would like to know, will be known to our descendents. We must therefore modify our goals and exchange divinity, in which only man’s groundless and gratuitous desires are fulfilled, for the human race or human nature, religion for education, the hereafter in heaven for the hereafter on earth, that is, the historical future, the future of mankind.” [316F-LER: p. 281]
