guarded by punishments eternal and infinite? The damnation of one
man is an infinitely greater evil in the universe, than the
subversion of a thousand millions of kingdoms. Nature has rendered
human infancy peculiarly frail and mortal, as it were on purpose to
refute the notion of a probationary state; the half of mankind die
before they are rational creatures.

                                  

     III. THE Physical arguments from the analogy of nature are
strong for the mortality of the soul, and are really the only
philosophical arguments which ought to be admitted with regard to
this question, or indeed any question of fact. -- Where any two
objects are so closely connected that all alterations which we have
ever seen in the one, are attended with proportionable alterations
in the other; we ought to conclude {34} by all rules of analogy,
that, when there are still greater alterations produced in the
former, and it is totally dissolved, there follows a total
dissolution of the latter. -- Sleep, a very small effect on the
body, is attended with a temporary extinction, at least a great
confusion in the soul. -- The weakness of the body and that of the
mind in infancy are exactly proportioned, their vigour in manhood,
their sympathetic disorder in sickness; their common gradual decay
in old age. The step further seems unavoidable; their common
dissolution in death. The last symptoms which the mind discovers are
disorder, weakness, insensibility, and stupidity, the fore-runners
of its annihilation. The farther progress of the same causes
encreasing, the same effects totally extinguish it. Judging by the
usual analogy of nature, no form can continue when transferred to a
condition of life very different from the original one, in which it
was placed. Trees perish in the water, fishes in the air, animals in
the earth. Even so small a difference as that of climate is often
{35} fatal. What reason then to imagine, that an immense alteration,
such as is made on the soul by the dissolution of its body and all
its organs of thought and sensation, can be effected without the
dissolution of the whole? Every thing is in common betwixt soul and
body. The organs of the one are all of them the organs of the other.
The existence therefore of the one must be dependant on that of the
other. -- The souls of animals are allowed to be mortal; and these
bear so near a resemblance to the souls of men, that the analogy
from one to the other forms a very strong argument. Their bodies are
not more resembling; yet no one rejects the argument drawn from
comparative anatomy. The Metempsychosis is therefore the only
system of this kind that philosophy can harken to. ([editor's note]
4)

     NOTHING in this world is perpetual, every thing however
seemingly firm is in continual flux and change, the world itself
gives symptoms of frailty and dissolution. How contrary to analogy,
therefore, to imagine {36} that one single from, seemingly the
frailest of any, and subject to the greatest disorders, is immortal
and indissoluble? ([editor's note] 5) What daring theory is that!
how lightly, not to say how rashly entertained! How to dispose of
the infinite number of posthumous existences ought also to embarrass
the religious theory. Every planet in every solar system we are at
liberty to imagine peopled with intelligent mortal beings, at least
we can fix on no other supposition. For these then a new universe
must every generation be created beyond the bounds of the present
universe, or one must have been created at first so prodigiously
wise as to admit of this continual influx of beings. ([editor's
note] 6) Ought such bold suppositions to be received by any
philosophy, and that merely on there pretext of a bare possibility?
When it is asked whether Agamemnon Thersites Hannibal, Varro,
and every stupid clown that ever existed in Italy, Scythia,
Bactria or Guinea, are now alive; can any man think, that a
scrutiny of nature will furnish arguments {37} strong enough to
answer so strange a question in the affirmative? The want of
argument without revelation sufficiently establishes the negative. -
- "Quanto facilius (says Pliny[8]) "certius que sibi quemque
credere, ac specimen securitatis antigene tali sumere experimento."
Our insensibility before the composition of the body, seems to
natural reason a proof of a like state after dissolution. Were our
horrors of annihilation an original passion, not the effect of our
general love of happiness, it would rather prove the mortality of
the soul. For as nature does nothing in vain, she would never give
us a horror against an impossible event. She may give us a horror
against an unavoidable; yet the human species could not be preserved
had not nature inspired us with and aversion toward it. All
doctrines are to be suspected which are favoured by {38} our
passions, and the hopes and fears which gave rise to this doctrine
are very obvious.

     'TIS an infinite advantage in every controversy to defend the
negative. If the question be out of the common experienced course of
nature, this circumstance is almost if not altogether decisive. By
what arguments or analogies can we prove any state of existence,
which no one ever saw, and which no way resembles any that ever was
seen? Who will repose such trust in any pretended philosophy as to
admit upon its testimony the reality of so marvellous a scene? Some
new species of logic is requisite for that purpose, and some new
faculties of the mind, that may enable us to comprehend that logic.

     NOTHING could set in a fuller light the infinite obligations
which mankind have to divine revelation, since we find that no other
medium could ascertain this great and important truth. {39}

                           ANTI SUICIDE.