It implies _only_ another life long enough for
its gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a
logical inference from it.
(3) Perhaps God _is_ "a deceiver" who knows that he is not? Assumption
of the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of a
God who is honorable and candid according to our conception of honor and
candor is another.
(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted in
us the desire of perfect happiness. It may be--it is--impossible to
gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied,
for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that he is going
to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have
intended whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's
illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited,
or that one of them is limited.
M. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat theatrical, astronomer. He has a
tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous
and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomena.
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