"It would be counter to the conservative nature of instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. It must rather be an ancient starting point, which the living being left long ago and to which it harks back again by all the circuitous paths of development. If we may assume as an experience, admitting of no exception that everything living dies from causes within itself and returns to the inorganic, we can only say ‘The goal of all life is death,’ and casting back, ‘The inanimate was there before the animate.’"-- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Table of Contents -- 7/26/97
