Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Beginning and the End of Man
The origin of man and his destiny is constantly agita ting the brain of mortals, and to many this enquiry is simply nonsense. The child cares nothing for his great grandfather's ancestry, and whether the race dates back fifty or two thousand years it matters not to him, since his amusements are not disturbed. The cow eats grass and chews her cud, unmindful of the past and indifferent about the future. Plenty to eat and drink, and plenty of sleep, is the sum of its requirements, andthe apparent completion of her happiness. Montaigne says of Pyrrho, the philosopher, that being one day in aiboat, in a very great tempest, he showed to those he saw the most affrighted about him and encouraged them by the exam ple of a hog that was there, nothing at all concerned at the storm. Shall we, then, dare to say that this advan tage of reason, of which we so much beast, and upon the account of which we think ourselves masters and emper ors over all other creatures, was given us for a torment? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
