Chapter II.

The pains and pleasures, which are believed to await us in a posthumous existence, may be anticipated either as conditional, and dependent upon the present behaviour of the believer, or as unconditional dispensations, which no conduct on his part can either amend or aggravate. Though perhaps it is impossible to produce any case in which the belief has actually assumed this latter shape, yet it will be expedient to survey it in this most general and indeterminate form, before we introduce the particular circumstances which have usually accompanied the reception of it. A few considerations will suffice to ascertain, whether expectations of posthumous pains and pleasures, considered in themselves and without any reference to the direction which they may give to human conduct, are of a nature to occasion happiness or misery to the believer.

Nothing can be more undeniable, than that a posthumous page 12 existence, if sincerely anticipated, is most likely to appear replete with impending pain and misery. The demonstration is brief and decisive.

A posthumous state of existence is necessarily unknown and impervious to human vision. We cannot see the ground which is before us. We possess not the slightest means of knowing whether it resembles that which we have already trodden. The scene before us is wrapped in impenetrable darkness. In this state of obscurity and ignorance, the imagination usurps the privilege of filling up the void, and what are the scenes which she portrays? They are similar to those with which the mind is overrun during a state of earthly darkness—the product of unmixed timidity and depression; fear is the never-failing companion and offspring of ignorance, and the circumstances of human life infallibly give birth to such a communion. For the painful sensations are the most obtrusive and constant assailants which lie in ambush round our path. The first years of our life are spent in suffering under their sting, before we acquire the means of warding them off. The sole acquisition applicable to this purpose is knowledge—knowledge of the precise manner and occasion in which we are threatened, and of the antidote which may obviate it. Still however the painful sensations are continually on the watch to take advantage of every unguarded moment; nor is there a single hour of our life in which the lessons of experience are not indispensably necessary for our protection against them.

Since then it is only to knowledge that we owe our respite from perpetual suffering; wherever our knowledge fails us and we are reduced to a state of unprotected helplessness, all our sense of security, all anticipations of future ease, must vanish along with it. Ignorance must generate incessant alarm and uneasiness. The regular economy of the universe, by which nature is subjected to general laws, and the past becomes the interpreter of the future, is often adduced as a reason for extolling the beneficence of the Deity; and a reliance on the stability of events, as well as in the efficacy of the provision we have made against the future, is justly regarded as the most indispensable ingredient in human happiness. Had we no longer any confident page 13 expectation that to-morrow would resemble yesterday—were we altogether without any rule for predicting what would occur to us after this night, how shocking would be our alarm and depression? The unknown future, which was about to succeed, would be pregnant to our affrighted imaginations with calamity from which we knew not how to shelter ourselves. Infants are timorous to a proverb, and perhaps there is scarcely any man, possessed of vision, whom darkness does not impress with some degree of apprehension and uneasiness. Yet if a man fancies himself unsheltered, when only the visible prognostics of impending evil are effaced, while all his other means of foresight and defence remain inviolate, how much keener will be the sense of his unprotected condition, when all means of predicting or averting future calamity are removed beyond his reach? If, in the one case, his alarmed fancy peoples the darkness with unreal enemies, and that too in defiance of the opposing assurances of reason, what an array of suffering will it conjure up in the other, where the ignorance and helplessness, upon which the alarm is founded, is so infinitely magnified, and where reason cannot oppose the smallest tittle of evidence?

I have thus endeavoured to show that from the unintermitting peril to which human life is exposed, and the perpetual necessity of knowledge to protect ourselves against it, mankind must infallibly conceive an unknown future as fraught with misery and torment. But this is not the only reason which may be assigned for such a tendency. Pain is a far stronger, more pungent, and more distinct sensation than pleasure; it is more-various in its shapes, more definite and impressive upon the memory, and lays hold of the imagination with greater mastery and permanence. Pain, therefore, is far more likely to obtrude itself upon the conceptions, where there exists no positive evidence to circumscribe their range, than pleasure. Throughout the catalogue of human suspicions, there exists not a case in which our ignorance is so profound as about the manner of a post-humous existence; and since no reason can be given for preferring one mode of conceiving it to another, the strongest sensations of the past will be perfectly sure to break in, and to appropriate the empty canvas. Pain will dictate page 14 our anticipation, and a posthumous life will be apprehended as replete with the most terrible concomitants which such a counsellor can suggest.

Besides, pain alone, and want or uneasiness, which is a species of pain, are the standing provisions of nature. Even the mode of appeasing those wants, is the discovery of human skill; what is called pleasure is a secondary formation, something superadded to the satisfaction of our wants by a farther reach of artifice; and only enjoyable when that satisfaction is perfect for the present, as well as prompt and certain for the future. Want and pain, therefore, are natural; satisfaction and pleasure, artificial and invented: and the former will on this ground also be more likely to present itself as the characteristic of an unknown state, than the latter.

The preceding arguments seem to evince most satisfactorily, that a posthumous existence, if really anticipated, is far more likely to be conceived as a state of suffering, than of enjoyment. Such anticipation, therefore, considered in itself, and without any reference to the direction which it gives to human conduct, will assuredly occasion more misery than happiness to those who entertain it.

Though believers in a posthumous existence seldom in fact anticipate its joys or torments as unconditionally awaiting them, and altogether independent of their present conduct, yet it is important to examine the effects and tendency of the belief, when thus entertained. We frequently hear the hope of immortality magnified as one of the loftiest privileges and blessings of human nature, without which man would be left in a state of mournful and comfortless destitution. To all these vague declamations, by which it is attempted to interest the partiality of mankind in favour of the belief in question, the foregoing arguments furnish a reply; they demonstrate that such anticipations, so far from conferring happiness on mankind, are certain to fasten in preference upon prospects of torments, and to occasion a large overplus of apprehension and uneasiness—at least until some revelation intervenes to settle and define them, and to terminate that ignorance which casts so terrific a character over the expected scenes.

He who imagines himself completely mortal, suffers no page 15 apprehension or misery, in this life, from the prospect of death, except that which the pains attending it, and the loss of present enjoyments, unavoidably hold out. A posthumous existence, if anticipated as blissful, would doubtless greatly alleviate the disquietude which the prospect of death occasions. It cannot be denied that such a persuasion would prove the source of genuine happiness to the believer. But the fact is, that a posthumous existence is not, by the majority of believers, anticipated as thus blissful, but as replete with terrors. The principles of human nature, to which reference has been made in the foregoing arguments, completely warrant this conclusion, supposing no revelation at hand to instil and guarantee more consoling hopes. It is obvious therefore, that natural religion, alone and unassisted, will to the majority of its believers materially aggravate the disquietude occasioned by the prospect of death. Instead of soothing apprehensions which cannot be wholly dispelled, it would superadd fresh grounds of uneasiness, wrapped up in an uncertainty which only renders them more painful and depressing.

Having thus ascertained, that posthumous anticipations, considered in themselves and in their capacity of feelings, occasion more unhappiness than benefit to the believer, I shall now examine them under that point of view in which they are commonly regarded as most beneficial and valuable.