the opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of individuals, and
produce determinations of the will, and modify the judgement, so
as to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably
similar. These are those operations in the order of the whole of
nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty
end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate;
nor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future state they should
become suddenly exempt from that subordination. The philosopher is
unable to determine whether our existence in a previous state has
affected our present condition, and abstains from deciding whether
our present condition will affect us in that which may be future.
That, if we continue to exist, the manner of our existence will be
such as no inferences nor conjectures, afforded by a consideration
of our earthly experience, can elucidate, is sufficiently obvious.
The opinion that the vital principle within us, in whatever mode
it may continue to exist, must lose that consciousness of definite
and individual being which now characterizes it, and become a unit
in the vast sum of action and of thought which disposes and animates
the universe, and is called God, seems to belong to that class of
opinion which has been designated as indifferent.

To compel a person to know all that can be known by the dead
concerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget; to plunge
him into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him; to punish or
reward him in a manner and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible
by us; to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good
and evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of
individual existence, is to inflict on him the doom of death.

A certain degree of pain and terror usually accompany the infliction