SECT. XI.
DEATH AND JUDGEMENT.
TO THE AUTHOR OF THE GUARDIAN.
Sir,
THE inclosed is a faithful translation from an old author, which if it deserves your notice, let the reader guess whether he was a Heathen or a Christian.
I am, Your most humble Servant.
"I cannot, my friends, forbear letting you know what I think of death; for, methinks, I view and understand it much better, the nearer I approach to it. 1 am convinced that your fathers, those illustrious persons whom 1 so much loved and honoured, do not cease to live, though they have passed through what we call death; they are undoubtedly still living, but it is that sort of life which alone deserves truly to be called life. In effect, while we are confined to bodies, we ought to esteem ourselves no other than a sort of galley slaves at the chain, since the soul, which is somewhat divine, and descends from heaven as the place of its original, seems debased and dishonoured by this mixture of flesh and blood, and, to be in a state of banishment from its celestial country. I cannot help thinking too, that one main reason of uniting souls to bodies, was, that the great work of the universe might have spectators to admire the beautiful order of nature, the regular motion of heavenly bodies, who should strive to express that regularity in the uniformity of their lives. When I consider the boundless activity of our minds, the remembrance we have of things past, our foresight of what is to come: when I relied on the noble discoveries, and vast improvements, by which these minds have advanced arts and sciences; I am entirely persuaded, and out of all doubt, that a nature which has in itself a fund of so many excellent things cannot possibly be mortal. I observe further, that my mind is altogether simple without the mixture of any substance of nature different from its own; I conclude from thence that it is indivisible, and consequently cannot perish.
By no means think, therefore, my dear friends, when 1 shall have quitted you, that I cease to be, or shall subsist no where. Remember that while we live together you do not see my mind, and yet are sure that I have one actuating and moving my body: doubt not then but that this same mind will have a being when it is separated, though you cannot then perceive its actions. What nonsense would it be to pay those honours to great men after their deaths, which we constantly do, if their souls did not then subsist? For my own part, I could never imagine that our minds live only when united to our bodies, and die when they leave them; or that they shall cease to think and understand, when disengaged from bodies, which without them have neither sense or reason: on the contrary, I believe the soul, when separated from matter, to enjoy the greatest purity and simplicity of its nature, and to have much more wisdom and light than while it was united. We see when the body dies, what becomes of all the parts which compose it; but we do not see the mind, either in the body, or when it leaves it. Nothing more resembles death than sleep: and it is in that state that the soul chiefly shews it has something divine in its nature. How much more then must it shew it, when entirely disengaged?