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

the account will be something below no-happiness: which must be some quantity of positive unhappiness, or misery.

Thus there will be rewards and punishments hereafter, and men will be happy or unhappy according to their behavior, enjoyments, and sufferings in this present life. But,

XV. If the immortality of the soul cannot be demonstrated, yet it is certain the contrary cannot.647 To say, when a house is ruinous and fallen, that it once had an inhabitant, and that he is escaped out of it and lives in some other place, can involve no contradiction or absurdity.648 And,

XVI. If the immortality of the soul should be considered only as a probability, or even as a chance possible, yet still a virtuous life is to be preferred before its contrary. For if the soul be mortal, and all perception perishes forever at our death, what in this case does a good man lose by his virtue? Very rarely more than some acts of devotion and instances of mortification, which too by custom grow habitual and easy,649 and it may be pleasant by being (or seeming at least to be) reasonable. On the other hand, what does a vicious man gain? Only such enjoyments as a virtuous man leaves, and those are such as most commonly owe their being to a vitiated taste, grow insipid in time, require more trouble and contrivance to obtain them than they are worth, go off disagreeably, are followed many times by sharp reflections and bitter penances in the rear, and at best: after a short time end in nothing, as if they had never been. This is all.650 But then if the soul prove to be immortal (as we have all the reason in the world to think it will), what does the virtuous man gain? His present pleasures (if not so many) are more sincere651 and natural,652 and the effect of his self-denials and submission to reason, in order to prepare himself for a future state, is the happiness of that state, which, without pretending to describe it, may be presumed to be immortal, because the soul is so, and to be purer and of a more exalted nature (i.e. truer and greater) than any of these low enjoyments here, because that state is every way in nature above this. And again: what does the wicked man lose? That happiness which the virtuous gain as such; and he sinks, besides, into some degree of the unhappiness of that future state, of which one may say in general that it may be as much greater than the unhappiness or sufferings of this world, as the happiness and joys of that are above those of this.

In a state that is spiritual and clear, everything will be purer and operate more directly and strongly and (if the expression may be tolerated) with more spirit; there will be fewer obstructions to either happiness or unhappiness, the soul will lie more open, and have more immediate and acute perceptions of either, so that each of them in their kind will be more intense: the one nearer to pure or mere happiness, the other to the contrary.653 But to enter further into the nature and economy of the yet unknown world is too arduous an undertaking for my philosopher.

I shall only add that the reasoning and virtuous man has at least this advantage over the foolish and profligate: that, though his wisdom and virtue cannot always rectify that which is amiss in himself or his circumstances, they will find means to alleviate his pressures and disadvantages, and support him under all the anomalies of life, with comforts of which the other knows nothing⁠—particularly this: the enjoyment of a humble but well-grounded expectation of felicity hereafter, sincere and durable.654

XVII. He, therefore, who would act according to truth, must, in the last place, not only consider what he is, and how circumstantiated in this present state, and provide accordingly, but further, must consider himself also as one whose existence proceeds on into another, and provide for that too. How I think this is to be done, by this time I hope you fully apprehend.

For a conclusion of the whole matter: let our conversation in this world, so far as we are concerned and able, be such as acknowledges everything to be what it is (what it is in itself, and what with regard to us, to other beings, to causes, circumstances, consequences); that is: let us by no act deny anything to be true which is true; that is: let us act according to reason; and that is: let us act according to the law of our nature. By honestly endeavoring to do this, we shall express our duty655 to Him who is the Author of it, and of that law, and at the same time prosecute our own proper happiness (the happiness of rational beings); we shall do what tends to make us easy here, and be qualifying ourselves and preparing for our removal hence to our long home: that great revolution, which, at the farthest, cannot be very far off.

And now, Sir, the trouble is almost over for the present, not properly which I give you, but which you have brought upon yourself, these being the Thoughts which you desired⁠—unless I have anywhere misrepresented myself through inadvertence, which I own may be. At the foot of the page I have in some places subjoined a few little strictures, principally of antiquity, after the manner of annotations, such as, when I came to revise these sheets, I could recollect upon the sudden,656 having no commonplace book to help me, nor thought of any such thing before that time. They may serve perhaps sometimes a little to explain the text, and sometimes to add weight, but chiefly to divert you, who know