fools think in their hearts. For what is God to us, or we to him, if
our connection extends but to the pitiful space allotted us in such
a pitiful world as this is? To be sure, no absurdity will be
rejected, which can smother the feelings, or keep the vices of
profligates in countenance; but, if only made like worms and
reptiles beneath our feet, to live this moment, and expire the next,
to struggle in a wretched life with every internal and external
calamity, {63} that can assault our bodies, or infest our minds; to
bear the mortifications of malignity, and the unmerited abhorrence
of those who perhaps may owe us the greatest and tenderest esteem,
and then, sunk in everlasting oblivion, our fate would stand on
record, in the annals of the universe, an eternal exception to all
that can be called good.

     Suppose a father possessed of the most exquisite tenderness for
his son, delighted with his similarity of form, his promising
constitution, his strength, gracefulness, and agility, his
undisguised emotions of filial affection, with the various presages
of a superior genius and understanding. Let us suppose this father
pleased with the employment of improving his faculties, and
inspiring him with future hopes of happiness and dignity: but that
he may give him a quicker sensibility to the misfortunes of others,
and a more unshaken fortitude to sustain his own, he often prefers
younger brethren, and even strangers, to those advantages which
otherwise merit, and the force of nature would determine him to
bestow on so worthy an offspring. Let us go further, and imagine, if
we can, that this father, without the least diminution of
tenderness, or any other apparent reason, destroys his son in the
bloom of life, and height of expectation: Who would not lament the
fate of such a youth with inconsolable tears? {64} Doomed never more
to behold the agreeable light of Heaven! never more to display his
personal graces, nor exercise his manly powers, never more to feel
his heart warm with benevolent regards, nor taste the soul-
transporting pleasure of obliging and being obliged! Blotted at once
from existence, and the fair creation, he sinks into silence and
oblivion, with all his sublime hopes disappointed, all his immense
desires ungratified, and all his intellectual faculties unimproved.
Without mentioning the instinctive horror which must attend such an
action, how absurd to reason, and how inconsistent with the common
feelings of humanity would it be to suppose a father capable of such
a deed. Forbid it, God! forbid it, Nature! that we should impute to
the munificent father of being and happiness, what, even in the
lowest of rational creatures, would be monstrous and detestable!

     (5) The truth is, that form which all mankind have deemed
immortal, is so far from being the frailest, that it seems in fact
the most indissoluble and permanent of any other we know. All the
rational and inventive powers of the mind happily conspire to
proclaim her infinitely different in nature, and superior in dignity
to every possible modification of pure matter. Were mankind {65}
joined in society, was life polished and cultivated, were the
sciences and arts, not only of utility, but elegance, produced by
matter? by a brute mass? A substance so contrary to all activity and
intelligence, that it seems the work of an omnipotent hand alone to
connect them. What judgement should we form of that principle which
informed and enlightened a Galileo, a Copernicus, or a Newton? What
inspiration taught them, to place the fun in the center of this
system, and assign the various orbs their revolutions round him,
reducing motions so diverse and unequal, to uniform and simple laws?
Was it not something like that great eternal mind, which first gave
existence to those luminous orbs, and prescribed each of them their
province? Whence the infinite harmony and variety of sound, the
copious flows of eloquence, the bolder graces and more inspired
elevations of poetry, but from a mind, an immaterial being, the
reflected image of her all-perfect Creator, in whom eternally dwells
all beauty and excellence. Were man only endowed with a principle of
vegetation, fixed to one peculiar spot, and insensible of all that
passed around him; we might, then, with some colour, suppose that
energy, if it may be so called, perishable. Were, he like animals
possessed of mere vitality, and qualified only to move and feel,
still we might have some reason to fear that, {66} in some future
period of duration, our Creator might resume his gift of existence.
but can any one, who pretends to the least reflection, imagine that
such a being as the human soul, adorned with such extensive
intellectual powers, will ever cease to be the object of that love
and care which eternally holds the universe in its embrace? Did she
obtain such a boundless understanding merely to taste the pleasure
of exercising it? to catch a transient glance of its objects, and
perish? Formed, as she is, to operate on herself, and all things
round her, must she cease from action, while yet the mighty task is
scarce begun? must she lose those faculties, by which she retains
the past, comprehends the presents and presages the future? must she
contemplate no more those bright impressions of divinity, which are
discovered in the material world; nor those stronger, and more
animated features of the same eternal beauty which shine in her own
god-like form? And must she be absorbed forever in the womb of
unessential nothing? Strange, that in the view, and even in the arms
of infinite power and goodness, a dawn so fair and promising, should
at one be clouded with all the horrors of eternal night? Such a
supposition would be contrary the whole conduct and laws of nature.
{67}

              The following Letters on SUICIDE are

                                  

                extracted from ROSSEAU's ELOISA.