Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/80

 crimes. No, it immediately finds itself a new home.”

“This is obviously another form of man’s eternal striving for immortality,” I ventured. “Does it not all arise from the weak mortal’s fear of death? Tolstoy was irreligious until his old age, when he started dreading the end.”

“I have no fear of death,” Gandhi said with emphasis. “I would regard it with relief and satisfaction. But it is impossible for me to think that that is the end. I have no proof. People have tried to demonstrate that the soul of a dead man finds a new home. I do not think this is capable of proof. But I believe it.”

And that was that. I knew this was not a subject for argument, but I felt like stating my view again, so I said, “I think we all seek immortality, only some believe they live in their children or their works and some believe they live in transmuted form in animals, or otherwise. Some men live longer because their works last longer, but I believe that faith in one’s immortality, if it is distinct from one’s acts, is really fear of death and an at tempt to find comfort in an illusion.” Gandhi thereupon reiterated his view with much passion and in fine-flowing English prose; he always spoke a rich, fluent English with a British university accent.

I said students had told me that the new genera-