ABSTRACT
Among educated men it has always been difficult to imagine a heaven of fulfilled desires. For since no two persons have exactly the same desires, one man's imagination of heaven may not suit another man's. The attempt to imagine a heaven is an attempt to conceive a world in which the disorders of human desire no longer exist. Now it is in their prayers that men have sought to come to terms with their disorders, and their prayers reveal most concretely how much the hunger for certainty and for help is a hunger for the fulfillment of desire. There has, however, always been a logical difficulty about offering petitions to an all-wise and all-powerful Providence. It is not necessary to dogmatize by saying that prayer is magic, or soliloquy, or communion, or petition for this and that, in order to see that it is the expression of a human need.
