I would take no
share in the commotion that would follow throughout the
particular corner of the earth that calls itself "the world." The thing
should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make other men
believe that they had written it. They would hire bull-hided
self-advertising Englishmen to bellow it abroad. Preachers
would found a fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was
new and that they had lifted the fear of death from all mankind.
Every Orientalist in Europe would patronize it discursively with
Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible women would invent unclean
variants of the men's belief for the elevation of their sisters.
Churches and religions would war over it. Between the hailing
and re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would
arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the
doctrine of the True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and
the New Era"; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers
shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the
tale. The mind leaped forward a hundred--two hundred--a thousand
years.
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