Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe | Page 9

majority of mankind have no such dread at all? True that there

is a strong feeling of horror excited by the idea of perishing from the
earth and being forgotten, of losing all those honors and all that fame
awaited them. Many feel this secret horror when they look down upon
the vale of futurity and reflect that though now the idols of the world,
soon all which will be left them will be the common portion of
mankind--oblivion! But this dread does not arise from any idea of their
destiny beyond the tomb, and even were this true, it would afford no
proof that the mind would exist forever, merely from its strong desires.
For it might with as much correctness be argued that the body will exist
forever because we have a great dread of dying, and upon this principle
nothing which we strongly desire would ever be withheld from us, and
no evil that we greatly dread will ever come upon us, a principle
evidently false.
Again, it has been said that the constant progression of the powers of
the mind affords another proof of its immortality. Concerning this,
Addison remarks, "Were a human soul ever thus at a stand in her
acquirements, were her faculties to be full blown and incapable of
further enlargement, I could imagine that she might fall away
insensibly and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we
believe a thinking being that is in a perpetual progress of improvement,
and traveling on from perfection to perfection after having just looked
abroad into the works of her Creator and made a few discoveries of his
infinite wisdom and goodness, must perish at her first setting out and in
the very beginning of her inquiries?"
In answer to this it may be said that the soul is not always progressing
in her powers. Is it not rather a subject of general remark that those
brilliant talents which in youth expand, in manhood become stationary,
and in old age gradually sink to decay? Till when the ancient man
descends to the tomb scarce a wreck of that once powerful mind
remains.
Who, but upon reading the history of England, does not look with awe
upon the effects produced by the talents of her Elizabeth? Who but
admires that undaunted firmness in time of peace and that profound
depth of policy which she displayed in the cabinet? Yet behold the

tragical end of this learned, this politic princess! Behold the triumphs of
age and sickness over her once powerful talents, and say 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 the
mistakes and oversights of this, and what an idea would this give us of
our All-wise Creator?
It is also said that all nations have some conceptions of a future state,
that the ancient Greeks and Romans believed in it, that no nation has
been found but have possessed some idea of a