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ON A FUTURE STATE.
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority
of human beings in all ages and nations that
we continue to live after death,—that apparent
termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual
existence. Nor has mankind been contented
with supposing that species of existence which some
philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution of
the component parts of the mechanism of a living being
into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest
particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution.
They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought,
which they have distinguished from the objects of it,
under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its
own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and
that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the
principle which animated it will remain perpetual and
unchanged. Some philosophers—and those to whom
we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in
physical science, suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence
is the mere result of certain combinations
among the particles of its objects; and those among
them who believe that we live after death, recur to the
interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome
the tendency inherent in all material combinations,
to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.
Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted to these two opinions, and en-
