this feeling from principles of human interest and self-love; for this
we need only see what the least enlightened persons see.

We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is
no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity;
that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us
every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the
dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy.

There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as
heroic as we like, that is the end which awaits the noblest life in the
world. Let us reflect on this, and then say whether it is not beyond
doubt that there is no good in this life but in the hope of another;
that we are happy only in proportion as we draw near it; and that, as
there are no more woes for those who have complete assurance of
eternity, so there is no more happiness for those who have no insight
into it.

Surely then it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is at least
an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt; and thus the
doubter who does not seek is altogether completely unhappy and
completely wrong. And if besides this he is easy and content, professes
to be so, and indeed boasts of it; if it is this state itself which is
the subject of his joy and vanity, I have no words to describe so silly
a creature.

How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the
expectation of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting
that we are in impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the
following argument occurs to a reasonable man?