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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
grasses turned into black coal, how glowing magma turned into metals and mountains. Science knows how atoms are composed, and by what laws planets rotate, and suns revolve in eternal orbs. Science can tell us the minutest details of the cells that compose our body, of the admirable structure of the human eye, of the workshop of our heart, of the development of the embryo, and of the decay of the senile body.
But science does not know whither the souls of the deceased have gone, nor why they had been bound to such and such a body for such and such a space of time, nor why they had to suffer from such and such ailments of body and of mind.
Others have tried to approach those great problems from the opposite side, viz., that of Religion, working by the means of imagination and of those dark feelings that are slumbering in the human heart, such as fear of the powerful, awe of the unknown, and that categorical longing for mental rest and support, for harmony and perfection, that so often makes us act in opposition to our instincts. And religion has made us see wonder over wonder : Heavens full of bright immortals, and ringing of joy, and deep Hells full of evil smell and darkness and clamour, it made us see hosts of spirits and goblins in tree and hill and fountain, and an eternal soul in man that migrates from birth to birth, or, becoming bodiless, haunts the place where its body withers, and enters paradise or hell. Religion made us see that great God, who created the universe, who created man and woman, plant and animal, who once, getting angry with men for their sins, punished them by pouring down floods over floods on them, and afterwards felt compassion and saved them, not only from the floods, but also from sin, which would have led them to eternal destruction, saved them from sin by incarnating on earth in the shape of a Christ, a Muni, a Krsna, or a Rāma or by sending down his messenger in the shape of a Moses, a Mohammud, a Zarthosht, and others. Religion promised heaven to the good and hell to the wicked, Religion made people build temples and offer
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