Редактирование: Prehistory of Transhumanism (раздел)

== Benjamin Franklin ==

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I wish it were possible... to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But... in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection.

</blockquote>

-- letter to Jacques Dubourg, April 1773, as quoted in [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ez8EAAAAMBAJ ''Life Magazine'', 9 Jan 1956] page 86

<blockquote>

The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter... All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard.

O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and the human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.

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-- [http://www.fis.org/public/obiterdicta/benfranklin.html letter to Joseph Priestley, Feb 1780]