That each may fill the circle mark’d by heav’n.
Essay on man, Epist. 182
We know, or may know enough of the settled order and succession of things for the regulation of our conduct, that is, for the common exigencies of natural life, and for avoiding the bad consequences of folly and vice, and reaping the good fruits of prudence and virtue; and that, it is evident, is all the foresight which is convenient, or can be pleasant to us, and therefore our duty and business is as the Poet expresses it.
—Quod adest memento
Componere aequus. 83
Yet we have reason to infer that death is not a dissolution of our moral powers.
It is not analogous to our make to suppose that it is.
Now for the same wise reasons that future events in this present life are hid from us, the particular events which are to happen to us after death; that is, the various scenes or changes of being we may be intended to pass through after leaving this state, are likewise beyond our forecast. But tho’ our future state cannot be fully foreseen by us, because such knowledge would neither be agreeable nor convenient for us;<229> yet from the present state, we may infer very probably that death is not a total dissolution of our moral powers and their acquirements, but that these do survive our bodies. Because, 1. The dissolution of our bodies is no more than putting an end to our communication with the sensible world, or to one kind of ideas we now receive from without, and the order in which they are conveyed into our minds; and therefore, there can be no reason to infer from hence the total dissolution of all powers. 2. Because this state is but our entrance on life, and having all the appearances of a proper first state of enjoyment, or rather of trial and discipline, for rational beings; it is natural to conclude, that it is but our first state of probation, and not the whole of our existence. 3. Because the ideas of wisdom and good order, which are natural to the human mind, or to which we are led by the consideration of the present state of things wherever we cast our eyes; and in the perswasion of the prevalence of which throughout the universal system, we must be the more confirmed, the more we examine nature, or the fuller view we are able to take of it: All these considerations give us good ground to hope, that beings endowed with such powers as men are, which may survive one method of enjoyment and exercise, were not made to be wilfully destroyed; or are not so totally subjected to the laws of matter and motion, that they cannot subsist any longer than these laws take place. We may indeed fairly put the issue of the question about our future existence upon this footing. “Whether it be more probable, that is, more analogous and consistent with the preceeding account of our make to imagine that we are made with moral powers, merely for the entertainments and exercises which we are capable of receiving from a sensible world by our bodies for the short while they only can last; or that it is but our first state of trial, and to be succeeded by another such existence as good order and wisdom<230> in the whole requires?” For surely, if in what we have seen, by enquiring strictly into our constitution, nothing but good order and perfect contrivance and harmony appear, there can be no reason to apprehend that disorder, far less, that cruel destruction, or wilful annihilation, ever can happen under such a wise and benevolent administration, as the present frame of things strongly and clearly bespeaks.
It is proper to consider this matter more fully.
But in order to set an affair, of such consequence to the quiet and satisfaction of every thinking person, in a true light, I would offer the following observations, which are but so many corollaries evidently resulting from the account that hath been given of human nature, and of the general laws to which all the effects and appearances belonging to it are reducible.
Our present connexion with a sensible world by means of our bodies, is arbitrary, not necessary.
We may therefore survive such a connexion.
Our perishing totally with it, must be the effect of an arbitrary appointment that it shall be so.
I. We have a thinking part that receives our sensible ideas from without, or upon which they are impressed, according to certain laws. It is not, as ancient philosophers have said,a the eyes, or the<231> ears, or any of our outward senses (properly speaking) which perceive: these are only certain methods<232> or orders, according to which, certain sensations are produced in us. Our thinking part therefore, which is properly ourself, is absolutely distinct from all these sensations which it receives from without. And what follows from thence, but that there can be no natural or necessary connexion between the subsistence of our thinking part, and its having its present sensations from without. But if this be true, then may it not only survive the prevalence of the order in which our present sensations are conveyed to us; but it cannot otherwise perish, when that order ceases to take place, than in consequence of a positive appointment of nature that our minds should not survive such an order. I need not dwell long upon this head, since it is owned by all philosophers that our present communication with a sensible world, according to the laws of which sensible ideas are produced in our minds, is but an arbitrary connexion. For if this be true, it must necessarily follow, that our minds might have existed without any such communication, and may subsist when it no longer takes place. Nay, it must follow, that as the present connexion between our thinking part and a sensible world, by means of our bodily organization, is but an arbitrary connexion; so if we are totally destroyed when our communication with a sensible world by means of our bodies is at an end, that must likewise be the effect of as positive and arbitrary an institution, as our present connexion with a sensible world is. But what reason is there to fear such a destroying will or humour in nature?
There is no reason to apprehend such an annihilating or destroying humour in nature.
The destruction of matter is not properly destruction.
Wherefore the destruction of a perceiving being cannot be inferred from the destruction of matter.
II. The destruction of material beings cannot properly be called destruction, since existence is lost upon matter, considered by itself as an unperceiving substance; and the end of its creation can be nothing else but its being perceived by some thinking beings. When matter therefore is said to be destroyed, all that can be said to be done is, that perceiving beings<233> have lost a certain class or order of perceptions, conveyed unto them from without, according to certain laws, which now no longer take place. The rules of analogous reasoning surely do not permit us to infer from the most evident symptoms of the destruction of unperceiving substances, the total destruction of perceiving beings, since these latter are the only ones to whom existence can really be any benefit or blessing? But which is more, when we narrowly examine what we call the destruction of matter, we evidently perceive that it is not properly destruction, but change of form. And certainly, if there really be no destruction at all, even of what is not benefited by existence, there can be no ground to apprehend the destruction of any being that is. The true state of the case, with regard to matter, as far as we can observe its changes, is,
Look round our world: behold the chain of love
Combining all below, and all above.
See, plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Form’d and impell’d, its neighbour to embrace.
See matter next, with various life endu’d,
Press to one centre still, the gen’ral good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
By turns they catch the vital breath, and die.
Essay on man, Epist. 3.84
But there is no ground to think any particle of matter is