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IN Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra says before she dies: “Give me my robe, put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me.”
I ind that last phrase quite haunting. William James, the former distinguished professor of psychology at Harvard University once likened these immortal longings to an experience he sometimes had – that of a tune that was there in the back of his mind, but which he could never quite identify, or get rid of. “It is most indefinite to be sure and rather faint. And yet I know that if it should cease, there would be a great hush, a great void in my life.”