The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

upon a difficult journey in which⁠—though he might perhaps now and then meet with a little smooth way, get an interval for rest and contemplation, or be flattered with some verdures and the smiles of a few daisies on the banks of the road⁠—yet upon the whole he must travel through much dirt, take many wearisome steps, be continually inquiring after some clue or directions to carry him through the turnings and intricacies of it, be puzzled how to get a competent viaticum and pay his reckonings, ever and anon be in danger of being lost in deep waters, and besides, forced all the while to fence against weather, accidents, and cruel robbers, who are everywhere lying in wait for him: I say, would anyone send a man upon such a journey as this, only that the man might faint and expire at the end of it, and all his thoughts perish: that is, either for no end at all, or for the punishment of one whom I suppose never to have hurt him, nor ever to have been capable of hurting him? And now, can we impute to God that which is below the common size of men?615

I am apt to think that even among those whose state is beheld with envy, there are many who, if at the end of their course they were put to their option whether, without any respect to a future state, they would repeat all the pleasures they have had in life, upon condition to go over again also all the same disappointments, the same vexations and unkind treatments from the world, the same secret pangs and tedious hours, the same labors of body and mind, the same pains and sicknesses, would be far from accepting them at that price.616

But here the case, as I have put it, only respects them who may be reckoned among the more fortunate passengers, and for one that makes his voyage so well, thousands are tossed in tempests and lost.617 How many never attain any comfortable settlement in the world? How many fail, after they have attained it, by various misfortunes? What melancholy, what distractions are caused in families by inhumane or vicious husbands, false or peevish wives, refractory or unhappy children; and, if they are otherwise, if they are good, what sorrow by the loss of them? How many are forced by necessity upon drudging and very shocking employments for a poor livelihood? How many subsist upon begging, borrowing, and other shifts, nor can do otherwise? How many meet with sad accidents, or fall into deplorable diseases? Are not all companies, and the very streets, filled with complaints, and grievances, and doleful stories? I verily believe that a great part of mankind may ascribe their deaths to want and dejection. Seriously, the present state of mankind is unaccountable if it has not some connection with another, and be not, as it were, the porch or entry to it.618

There is one thing more, of which notice ought to be taken. To one who carefully peruses the story and face of the world, what appears to prevail in it? Is it not corruption, vice, iniquity, folly, at least? Are not debauching,619 getting per fas aut nefas,620 defaming one another, erecting tyrannies of one kind or other, propagating empty and senseless opinions with bawling and fury, the great business of this world? And are not all these contrary to reason? Can anyone then, with reason, imagine that reason should be given, though it were but to a few, only to be run down and trampled upon and then extinguished? May we not rather conclude that there must be some world where reason will have its turn, and prevail and triumph? Some kingdom of reason to come?621

In the last place, that great expectation which men have of continuing to live in another state beyond the grave, has, I suppose, been commonly admitted as one proof that they shall live, and does seem indeed to me to add some weight to what has been said. That they generally have had such an expectation, can scarce be denied. The histories of mankind, their deifications, rites, stories of apparitions, the frequent mention of a hades, with rewards and punishments hereafter, etc. all testify that even the Heathen world believed that the souls of men survived their bodies. Their ignorance, indeed, of the seats and circumstances of the departed has begot many errors and superstitions, and these have been multiplied by licentious poets and idle visionaries, but this, being no more than what is usual in the like cases, ought to be no prejudice against the fundamental opinion itself.

Cicero,622 though he owns there were different opinions among the Greek philosophers about this matter, that quod literis extet, Pherecydes Syrus primum dixit, animos hominum esse sempiternos, that Pythagoras and his school confirmed this opinion; that Plato was the man who brought a reason for it, etc., yet tells us plainly, naturam ipsam de immortalitate animorum tacitam judicare, that nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium, that permanere animos arbitramur consensu nationum omnium,623 and more to this purpose. Now if this consent was only the effect of some tradition handed from parents to their children, yet since we meet with it in all the quarters of the world (where there is any civility or sense), and in all ages, it seems to be coeval to mankind itself, and born with it. And this is sufficient to give a great authority to this opinion of the soul’s immortality. But this is not all. For it is supported by all the foregoing arguments, and many other reasonings and symptoms which we may find within ourselves. All which, put together, may at least justify an expectation of a