The Gift Of Immortality

Immortality involves the transcendence of our present mortal state and sets mankind beyond death. At the level of mind this includes a fundamental shift in the nature of our thinking and thoughts, replacing the temporal with the everlasting. Written in a style accessible to the general reader, this work explores the anatomy of truth and spirituality in relation to thinking immortal. Drawing on personal experience and notable examples, it delivers thought provoking insights into the nature and dynamics of this profound subject, immensely important to human existence and progress.

This book considers the boast of literary power to glorify or immortalize, a topos of enormous popularity. Focusing on representative figures of Renaissance humanism and the roots of the topos in antiquity, author Stephen Murphy elaborates a complex myth of poetic power. This myth, constructed with the help of such theorists as Ernst Cassirer, Giambattista Vico, Marcel Mauss, and Theodor Adorno, includes the elements of nostalgia for a primordial epoch of magical effectiveness and social centrality, the ideal of patronage as gift exchange, and the absorption of these extra-literary circumstances into literary convention.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1916 Edition.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.