not that the faculties of man are always progressing in their powers.

From the activity of the mind at the hour of death has also been
deduced its immortality. But it is not true that the mind is always
active at the time of death. We find recorded in history numberless
instances of those talents, which were once adequate to the government
of a nation, being so weakened and palsied by the touch of sickness as
scarcely to tell to beholders what they once were. The talents of the
statesman, the wisdom of the sage, the courage and might of the
warrior, are instantly destroyed by it, and all that remains of them
is the waste of idiocy or the madness of insanity.

Some minds there are who at the time of death retain their faculties
though much impaired, and if the argument be valid these are the only
cases where immortality is conferred. Again, it is urged that the
inequality of rewards and punishments in this world demand another in
which virtue may be rewarded and vice punished. This argument, in the
first place, takes for its foundation that by the light of nature the
distinction between virtue and vice can be discovered. By some this is
absolutely disbelieved, and by all considered as extremely doubtful.
And, secondly, it puts the Creator under an obligation to reward and
punish the actions of his creatures. No such obligation exists, and
therefore the argument cannot be valid. And this supposes the Creator
to be a being of justice, which cannot by the light of nature be
proved, and as the whole argument rests upon this foundation it
certainly cannot be correct.

This argument also directly impeaches the wisdom of the Creator, for
the sense of it is this,--that, forasmuch as he was not able to manage
his government in this world, he must have another in which to rectify