that we do or do not live after death.

The examination of this subject requires that it should be stript
of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion
of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and
punishments, are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved
that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily
can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.
It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to
be numbered among the attributes of the Deity, He will undoubtedly
compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that He will
make every sensitive being who does not deserve punishment, happy
for ever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious
as well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person,
and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it
be proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which
regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent
nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the
same time, that the animating power survives the body which it
has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as
those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future
state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of
punishment or reward.

By the word death, we express that condition in which natures
resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they were.
We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have
sensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them.
We know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine
texture of material frame, without which we have no experience that