The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

not thinking of them. Their sufferings are attended with no reflection,630 but are such as they are said to be section II, proposition I, observation 8. They are void of cares; are under no apprehension for families and posterity; never fatigue themselves with vain inquiries, hunting after knowledge which must perish with them; are not anxious about their future state,631 nor can be disappointed of any hopes or expectations; and at last some sudden blow (or a few minutes of unforeseen pain) finishes them, having never so much as known that they were mortal.

The other is that the soul is a principle of life: that which brings vitality to the body. For how should that which has been proved to be a substance, and at the same time is also a principle of life, and as such (as being what it is) is alive⁠—I say, how can that die,632 unless it is annihilated?

Here I begin to be very sensible how much I want a guide. But as the religion of nature is my theme, I must at present content myself with that light which nature affords; my business being, as it seems, only to show what a Heathen philosopher, without any other help, and almost αὐτοδίδακτος,633 may be supposed to think. I hope that neither the doing of this, nor anything else contained in this Delineation, can be the least prejudice to any other true religion. Whatever is immediately revealed from God must, as well as anything else, be treated as being what it is, which cannot be if it is not treated with the highest regard, believed, and obeyed. That, therefore, which has been so much insisted on by me, and is, as it were, the burden of my song, is so far from undermining true revealed religion, that it rather paves the way for its reception. This I take this opportunity to remark to you once for all. And so, returning to my philosopher, I cannot imagine but that even he would have at least some such general thoughts as these which make up almost the remainder of this last section.

IX. The soul, when it parts from this gross body, will pass by some law into some new seat, or state, agreeable to the nature of it.634 Every species of beings must belong to some region, or state. Because nothing can be, but it must be somewhere and somehow; and there being different kinds of abodes and manners of subsisting in the universe, and the natures of the things that are to exist in them being also different, there will be a greater congruity between these several natures respectively and some particular places or states, than there is between them and others; and indeed, such a one that out of those, perhaps, they cannot subsist, or not naturally. To those, therefore, must be their respective tendences; to those they are adjudged by the course of nature and constitution of things, or rather by the Author of them.635

While the soul is in the body, it has some powers and opportunities of moving it spontaneously, or otherwise than it would be moved by the mere laws of gravitation and mechanism. This is evident. But yet, notwithstanding this, the weight of that body to which at present it is limited (among other causes) constrains it to act for a while upon this stage. That general law to which bodies are subjected, makes it sink in this fluid of air, so much lighter than itself; keeps it down; and so determines the seat of it, and of the soul in it, to be upon the surface of this earth where, or in whose neighborhood, it was first produced. But then, when the soul shall be disengaged from the gross matter which now encloses and encumbers it, and either become naked spirit or be only veiled in its own fine and obsequious vehicle, it must at the same time be either freed from the laws of bodies and fall under some other, which will carry it to some proper mansion or state,636 or at least by the old ones be capable of mounting upwards637 in proportion to the volatility of its vehicle, and of emerging out of these regions into some medium more suitable and (if the philosopher may say so) equilibrious. Thus much as to the general state of souls after death. But then,

X. In this new state, or place of abode, there may be different stations befitting the differences of particular souls among themselves, as they are more or less perfect in their kind. We see even inanimate bodies, which have different gravities, figures, impulses, etc., settle into some order among themselves, agreeable to these differences. And so by the same universal rule in nature (viz. that differences in things are attended with answerable relations and effects) souls must also take their situation in some kind of order according to their differences

XI. The great difference of human souls, with respect to perfection and imperfection, lies in their different degrees and habits638 of reasonableness or unreasonableness.639 That is to say: not only in men’s different improvements, or neglects and abuse, of their rational faculties; but also in the greater or less influence of these upon their actions, and by consequence in their different degrees of virtue or vice. For a man is accounted a reasonable man when he reasons rightly and follows his reason: in which expression virtue must be included, being (as proposition IV, et al.) nothing but the practice of reason and truth.

That men are reasonable, or the contrary, in different degrees is plain. Some reason well upon some subjects but, in respect of others to which they have not been accustomed, are dim and confused; or they are partial