When Henry David Thoreau was on his deathbed, he was visited by a minister who urged his dying friend to be ready for death: “Do you know where you’re going in the next world?”
Thoreau waved him away with the words, “One world at a time.”
His attitude has caused humanists to uphold him as a man of moral courage, resisting a cowardly flight to religion. However, he was, in fact, the model of a fool.
Imagine a man in Florida boarding a plane to Alaska in mid-winter with no baggage, who answers the question, “Do you know where you’re going?” with “One city at a time, my friend.”
Only a fool fails to plan ahead for the inevitable.