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Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852)Inventor of Kindergarten
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"How can anyone believe in real death, in annihilation? Nothing dies; everything only becomes changed in order to pass into a new and higher life. This is true of every little herb; for its essential inherent qualities are indestructible. Everything retains in each of its parts the individual character assigned to it,--that is, its essence,--to all eternity. How, then, should the most marked characteristic of a human being, the consciousness of his own individual personality, be lost, even though he should pass through millions of new existences? What you people call death is nowhere to be found in creation, but only expansion, life ascending higher and higher, always nearer to God. If you only knew how to read the book of nature rightly, you would find everywhere in it the confirmation of the revelation of the soul's immortality. Throughout the whole of nature there is nothing but continually repeated resurrection. The universal and the individual are opposites which presuppose one another. Without individual human beings there would be no humanity, and without humanity there would be no individuals. The race only continues because the personal units continue. Humanity comprises not only mankind of today, but mankind of the past and of the future: all the human beings that have ever existed on earth make up humanity, and humanity presupposes conscious existence, both general and personal. "~ Friedrich Froebel, Froebel Yearbook by Fanny Chapin, Chicago 1894 | ||