troubles of life in a sleep without a dream, and is restrained alone from seeking it by the apprehension of “What dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil ;”
by the fear, in fact, of a future state, in which the calamities of this life may be exchanged for others more enduring, in the undiscovered country of the future. This “dread of some thing after death” scarcely deserves the name of conscience,
which he applies to it. The fear of punishment is the lowest motive for virtuous action, and is far removed in its nature
from the inward principle of doing right for its own sake. The word, however, does not seem to be here applied in its higher sense, as the arbiter of right, but rather in that of reflective meditation.
It is this that makes “cowards of
us all.” It is this that prevents Hamlet seeking his own rest in the annihilation he longs for. It is by this also, that his hand is withheld from the act of wild justice and revenge upon which his mind sits on brood. It is thus that he accu rately describes the timbre of his own mind, so active to think, so inert to act, so keen to appreciate the evils of life, so averse to take any active part against them. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.”
The motive against suicide here adduced is undoubtedly a mean and fallacious one. It is mean, because it is cowardly; the coward want of patience manfully to endure the evils of this mortal life being kept in check by the coward fear of future punishment. It is fallacious, because it balances the evils of
this life against the apprehended ones of the future; there fore when, in the judgment of the sorely afflicted, the weight of present evils more than counterpoises those which the amount
