creature as man? Can any one approve of Alexander's rage, who intended to exterminate a whole nation because they had feized his favorite horse Bucephalus ? *

Heaven and Hell fuppofe two diftinct fpecies of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind floats betwixt vice and virtue. -Were one to go round the world with an intention of giving a good fupper to the righteous, and a found drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in his choice, and would find that the merits and the demerits of moft men and women fcarcely amount to the value of either.-To fuppofe measures of approbation and blame different from the human confounds every thing. Whence do we learn that there is such a thing as moral distinctions, but from our own fentiments? What man who has not met with perfonal provocation (or what good-natured man who has) could inflict on crimes, from the fenfe of blame alone, even the common, legal, frivolous punishments? And does any thing fteel the breaft of judges and juries against the fentiments of humanity but reflection on neceffity and public intereft? By the Roman law those who had been guilty of parricide, and confeffed their crime, were put into a fack along with an ape, a dog, and a ferpent, and thrown into the river. Death alone was the punishment of those who denied their

* Quint. Curtius. lib. VI. cap. 5.

guilt, however fully proved. A criminal was tried before Auguftus, and condemned after a full conviction; but the humane emperor, when he put the laft interrogatory, gave it fuch a turn as to lead the wretch into a denial of his guilt. "You furely (faid the prince) did not kill your father."* This lenity fuits our natural ideas of right even towards the greatest of all criminals and even though it prevents fo inconfiderable a fufferance. Nay even the most bigotted priest would naturally, without reflection, approve of it provided the crime was not herefy or infidelity; for as thefe crimes hurt himself in his temporal interest and advantages, perhaps he may not be altogether fo indulgent to them. The chief fource of moral ideas is the reflection on the interest of human fociety. Qught thefe interefts, fo fhort, fo frivolous, to be guarded by punishments eternal and infinite? The damnation of one man is an infinitely greater evil in the univerfe, than the fubverfion 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 ftate; the half of mankind die before they are rational creatures.

III. The Phyfical arguments from the analogy of nature are strong for the mortality of the foul, and are really the only philofophical arguments which ought to be admitted with regard to this queftion, or indeed any question of fact.-Where

Suet. Auguf, cap. 3.

any two objects are fo clofely connected that all alterations which we have ever seen in the one, are attended with proportionable alterations in the other, we ought to conclude by all rules of analogy, that when there are ftill greater alterations produced in the former, and it is totally diffolved, there follows a total diffolution of the latter.-Sleep, a very small effect on the body, is attended with a temporary extinction, at least a great confufion in the foul.-The weaknefs of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly proportioned, their vigor in manhood; their fympathetic diforder in ficknefs; their common gradual decay in old age. The step further feems unavoidable; their common diffolution in death. The laft fymptoms which the mind difcovers are diforder, weakness, infenfibility, and ftupidity, the forerunners of its annihilation. The farther progrefs of the fame causes increasing, the fame effects totally extinguifh 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 perifh in the water, fifhes in the air, animals in the earth. Even fo fmall a difference as that of climate is often fatal. What reason then to imagine, that an immenfe alteration, fuch as is made on the foul by the diffolution of its body, and all its organs of thought and fenfation, can be effected without the diffolution of the whole? Every thing is in common betwixt foul and body. The

organs of the one are all of them the organs of The exiftence therefore of the one

the other.

must be dependant on that of the other.—The fouls of animals are allowed to be mortal; and these bear fo near a refemblance to the fouls 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 fyftem of this kind that philofophy can hearken to. (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 diffolution. How contrary to analogy, therefore, to imagine that one fingle form, feemingly the fraileft of any, and fubject to the greatest disorders, is immortal and indissoluble ? (5) What daring theory is that! how lightly, not to say how rafhly entertained! How to dif pose of the infinite number of posthumous existences ought also to embarrass the religious theory. Every planet in every solar fyftem we are at liberty to imagine peopled with intelligent mortal beings, at least we can fix on no other fuppofition. For these then a new universe must every generation be created beyond the bounds of the present univerfe, or one must have been created at firft fo prodigiously wide as to admit of this continual influx of beings. (6) Ought fuch bold fuppofitions to be received by any philofophy, and that merely on the pretext of a bare

66.

poffibility? When it is afked whether Agamemnon, Therfites, Hannibal, Varro, and every ftupid clown that ever exifted in Italy, Scythia, Bactria or Guinea, are now alive; can any man think, that a fcrutiny of nature will furnish arguments ftrong enough to anfwer fo ftrange a queftion in the affirmative? The want of argument without revelation fufficiently eftablishes the negative."Quanto facilius (fays Pliny *) certiusque, fibi quemque credere, ac fpecimen "fecuritatis antigenitali fumere experimento. Our infenfibility before the compofition of the body feems to natural reafon a proof of a like ftate after diffolution. Were our horrors of annihilation an original paffion, not the effect of our general love of happinefs, it would rather prove the mortality of the foul. For as nature does nothing in vain, fhe would never give us a horror against an impoffible event. She She may give us a horror againft an unavoidable event, provided our endeavours, as in the present cafe, may often remove it to fome diftance. Death is in the end unavoidable; yet the human fpecies could not be preserved had not nature infpired ns with an averfion towards it. All doctrines are to be fufpected which are favored by our paffions; and the hopes and fears which gave rife to this doctrine are very obvious.

Tis an infinite advantage in every controverfy to defend the negative. If the queftion be out of the common experienced courfe of nature,