question of Socrates, 'What is that which we suppose to be immortal?' Is
it the personal and individual element in us, or the spiritual and
universal? Is it the principle of knowledge or of goodness, or the union
of the two? Is it the mere force of life which is determined to be, or the
consciousness of self which cannot be got rid of, or the fire of genius
which refuses to be extinguished? Or is there a hidden being which is
allied to the Author of all existence, who is because he is perfect, and to
whom our ideas of perfection give us a title to belong? Whatever answer is
given by us to these questions, there still remains the necessity of
allowing the permanence of evil, if not for ever, at any rate for a time,
in order that the wicked 'may not have too good a bargain.' For the
annihilation of evil at death, or the eternal duration of it, seem to
involve equal difficulties in the moral government of the universe.
Sometimes we are led by our feelings, rather than by our reason, to think
of the good and wise only as existing in another life. Why should the
mean, the weak, the idiot, the infant, the herd of men who have never in
any proper sense the use of reason, reappear with blinking eyes in the
light of another world? But our second thought is that the hope of
humanity is a common one, and that all or none will be partakers of
immortality. Reason does not allow us to suppose that we have any greater
claims than others, and experience may often reveal to us unexpected
flashes of the higher nature in those whom we had despised. Why should the
wicked suffer any more than ourselves? had we been placed in their
circumstances should we have been any better than they? The worst of men
are objects of pity rather than of anger to the philanthropist; must they
not be equally such to divine benevolence? Even more than the good they
have need of another life; not that they may be punished, but that they may
be educated. These are a few of the reflections which arise in our minds
when we attempt to assign any form to our conceptions of a future state.