"That is the question unbelief always asks," she said. "It seems so
difficult to answer, and yet it is really so simple. The idea of death
of course arose from a distorted projection of the condition of sleep
upon the diseased imagination. With sin came the bewilderment of human
reason, and the delusion followed as an inevitable morbid growth."
"Then the earlier generations of mankind were immortal?"
"Undoubtedly. We have traces of the fact in all the old mythologies."
"But what became of them?"
"Once the idea of death had entered the world," Mrs. Crapps said
impressively, "it spread like the plague until it had infected all
mankind. Even those who had lived for ages to prove it false were not
able to resist the prevalence of the thing they knew to be untrue,--any
more," she added, dropping her eyes, and speaking in a tone sad and
patient, "than we who to-day understand that there is no such thing as
death can resist the overwhelming power of the belief of the masses of
the race. The might of the will of the majority, directed by an
appalling delusion, compels us to submit to that which we yet know to
be an unreality.
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