passed that degree and colour of enormity, with which it is supposed
no, inferior infliction is commensurate.

And first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or a reward,
or whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can take upon himself
to assert. That that within us which thinks and feels, continues
to think and feel after the dissolution of the body, has been the
almost universal opinion of mankind, and the accurate philosophy
of what I may be permitted to term the modern Academy, by showing
the prodigious depth and extent of our ignorance respecting the
causes and nature of sensation, renders probable the affirmative
of a proposition, the negative of which it is so difficult to
conceive, and the popular arguments against which, derived from
what is called the atomic system, are proved to be applicable only
to the relation which one object bears to another, as apprehended
by the mind, and not to existence itself, or the nature of that
essence which is the medium and receptacle of objects.

The popular system of religion suggests the idea that the mind,
after death, will be painfully or pleasurably affected according to
its determinations during life. However ridiculous and pernicious
we must admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to be, there
is a certain analogy, not wholly absurd, between the consequences
resulting to an individual during life from the virtuous or vicious,
prudent or imprudent, conduct of his external actions, to those
consequences which are conjectured to ensue from the discipline
and order of his internal thoughts, as affecting his condition in
a future state. They omit, indeed, to calculate upon the accidents
of disease, and temperament, and organization, and circumstance,
together with the multitude of independent agencies which affect