So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died I felt like I had lost a limb.
There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena and religion.
It is curious how from time immemorial man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear while at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.