14 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF A FUTURE STATE. 



innocent, are sent into a place where they suffer 

 pains proportioned to their faults, till, being 

 purged and cleansed of their guilt, and after 

 wards restored to liberty, they receive the reward 

 of the good actions they have done in the body. 

 Those who are judged to be incurable, on ac 

 count of the greatness of their crimes, the fatal 

 destiny that passes judgment upon them, hurls 

 them into Tartarus, from whence they never de 

 part. Those who are found guilty of crimes, 

 great indeed, but worthy of pardon, who have 

 committed violences, in the transports of rage, 

 against their father or mother, or have killed 

 aome one in a like emotion, and afterwards re 

 pented suffer the same punishment with the last, 

 out lor a time only, till by prayers and supplica 

 tions, they have obtained pardon from those they 

 have injured. But those who have passed through 

 life with peculiar sanctity of manners, are re 

 ceived on high into a pure region, where they 

 live without their bodies to all eternity, in a 

 series of joys and delights which cannot be de 

 scribed.&quot; From such considerations, Socrates 

 concludes, &quot; if the soul be immortal, it requires 

 to be cultivated with attention, not only for what 

 we call the time of life, but for that which is to 

 follow, I mean eternity ; and the least neglect in 

 this point may be attended with endless conse 

 quences. If death were the final dissolufion of 

 being, the wicked would be great gainers by it, 

 by being delivered at once from their bodies, their 

 souls, and their vices ; but as the soul is immor 

 tal, it has no other means of being freed from its 

 evils, nor any safety for it, but in becoming very 

 good and very wise ; for it carries nothing with 

 it, but its good or bad deeds, its virtues and vices, 

 which are commonly the consequences of the 

 education it has received, and the causes of eter 

 nal happiness or misery.&quot; Having held such 

 discourses with his friends, he kept silent for 

 some time, and then drank off the whole of the 

 poisonous draught which had been put into his 

 hand, with amazing tranquillity, and an inex 

 pressible serenity of aspect, as one who was 

 about to exchange a short and wretched life, for 

 a blessed and eternal existence. 



The descriptions and allusions, contained in 

 the writings of the ancient poets, are a convin 

 cing proof, that the notion of the soul s immortal 

 ity was a universal opinion in the times in which 

 they wrote, and among the nations to whom their 

 writings were addressed. Homer s account of 

 the descent of Ulysses into hell, and his descrip 

 tion of Minos in the shades below, distributing 

 justice to the dead assembled in troops around 

 his tribunal, and pronouncing irrevocable judg 

 ments, which decide their everlasting fate, de 

 monstrate, that they entertained the belief, that 

 virtues are rewarded, and that crimes are pun 

 ished, in another state of existence. The poems 

 of Ovid and Virgil contain a variety of descrip 

 tions, in which the same opinions are involved. 



Their notions of future punishment are set fort! 

 in the descriptions they give, of Ixion, who wa 

 fastened to a wheel, and whirled about continu 

 ally with a swift and rapid motion of Tantalus, 

 who, for the loathsome banquet he made for the 

 gods, was set in water up to the chin, with apples 

 hanging to his very lips, yet had no power either 

 to stoop to the one to quench his raging thirst, or 

 to reach to the other to satisfy his craving appetite 

 of the fifty daughters of Danaus, who, for the 

 barbarous massacre of their husbands in one 

 night, were condemned in hell to fill a oarrel full 

 of holes with water, which ran out again as fast 

 as it was filled of Sisyphus, who, for his rob 

 beries, was set to roll a great stone up a steep 

 hill, which, when it was just at the top, suddenly 

 fell down again, and so renewed his labour and 

 of Tityus, who was adjudged to have a vulture 

 to feed upon his liver and entrails, which still 

 grew and increased as they were devoured. 

 Their notions of future happiness are imbodied 

 in the descriptions they have given of the Hes 

 perian gardens, and the Elysian fields, where the 

 souls of the virtuous rest secure from every dan-- 

 ger, and enjoy perpetual and uninterrupted bliss. 

 And as the nations of antiquity recognised 

 the doctrine of a future state of existence, so 

 there is scarcely a nation or tribe of mankind, 

 presently existing, however barbarous and untu 

 tored, in which the same opinion does not pre 

 vail. The natives of the Society Isles believe, 

 that after death, there is not only a state of con 

 scious existence, but degrees of eminence and 

 felicity, according as men have been more or 

 less pleasing to iheEatova, or Deity, while Upon 

 earth. The chiefs of the Friendly Islands be 

 lieve in the immortality of their soul, which, at 

 death, they say is immediately conveyed in a 

 fast-sailing canoe, to a distant country, called 

 Doobludha, which they describe as resembling 

 the Mahometan paradise, that those who are 

 conveyed thither are no more subject to death, 

 but feast on all the favourite productions of thei. 1 

 native soil, with which this blissful abode is 

 plentifully furnished. The New Zealandera 

 believe, that the third day after the interment of 

 a man, the heart separates itself from the corpse, 

 and that this separation is announced by a ge 

 neral breeze of wind, which gives warning of 

 its approach, by an inferior divinity that hovers 

 over the grave, and who carries it to the clouds. 

 They believe that the soul of the man whose 

 flesh is devoured by the enemy, is doomed to a 

 perpetual fire, while the soul of the man whose 

 body has been rescued from those that killed 

 him, and the souls of all who die a natural death, 

 ascend to the habitations of the gods. The in 

 habitants of the Pelew Islands, according to the 

 account of Captain Wilson, although they have 

 few religious rites and ceremonies, believe in 

 one Supreme Being, and in a future state of 

 rewards and punishments. In the religion of 



