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Chapter Thirty-Three: Penance
PART V
Ascension
February—April, 1878
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Penance“I recognize, in retrospect, why some would take offense to the Immortalist Papers. The fact of the matter is, they reflected the commonly-held beliefs of the age in which they were written. I do not feel it is fair to blame me for spreading ideas that were already commonly-held. You must understand that we are in a period of rapid change, and one can hardly be expected to know what lies around every corner. For God’s sake, I was only doing what I was told! You want me to put my family at risk? My wife, my children? If I’d refused to write those papers, you know what would have happened to them—and to me, for that mat
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