Science and immortality / by William Osler.

  • Osler, William, Sir, 1849-1919.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Science and immortality / by William Osler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of thinking — perhaps from the form of the word — that Nirvana means annihilation in the sense of destruction, whereas in the East they understand by it annihilation through growth, in the sense in which the seed is annihilated in the grown plant, the ovum in the animal, or any germ or embryonic form in its complete development. As the possible development of man is infinite, he is in the same way annihilated as man by growing to be coexten¬ sive with the universe, which is the natural course of things according to the Eastern view,-—the nor¬ mal process of growth, which may be hastened intentionally if desirable.” Note 4, page 10. Letters of a Chinese Official, 1902. Note 5, page 11. Nowhere is this philosophy of life so graphically described as in the Wisdom of Solomon, chapter ii.: “ Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of a man there is no remedy: neither was there any man known to have returned from the grave. For we are born at all adventure: and we shall be here¬ after as though we had never been : for the breath in our nostrils is as smoke, and a little spark in the moving of our heart: which being extinguished, our body shall be turned into ashes, and our spirit