THE CONCEPT OF THE AFTERLIFE AS AN IMPERATIVE

Argument for the Life Hereafter ~ 214 ~ instance, embraced Christianity on a large scale because it offered them a haven of bliss in the afterlife. Had they not been slaves, they might have remained polytheists and idolaters. It is felt then that with the progress made in science, man will certainly become happier and more prosperous and that ultimately the concept of a second, better life will die a natural death. The history of science and technology over the last four hundred years does not, however, bear this out. Capitalism, an economic phenomenon which went hand in hand with advances in technology, caught up ordinary people in its grip, reducing artisans and craftsmen to mere machine-minders and diverted wealth away from the proletariat and into the hands of the industrial barons. Men who had once been proud of their skills became mere labourers with no further control over their own destinies and no hope of a better life in sight. “Das Kapital” (capital) by Karl Marx, presents a gruesome picture of the exploitation of the masses, which took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It took one whole century of socialist crusading before conditions took a turn for the