Thoughts Suggested By Mr. Froude's "Progress"

Excerpt

To revisit this earth, some ages after their departure from it, is a common wish among men.  We frequently hear men say that they would give so many months or years of their lives in exchange for a less number on the globe one or two or three centuries from now.  Merely to see the world from some remote sphere, like the distant spectator of a play which passes in dumb show, would not suffice.  They would like to be of the world again, and enter into its feelings, passions, hopes; to feel the sweep of its current, and so to comprehend what it has become.