this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness for ever?

For this reason I am of opinion, that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means* to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity.

'It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all nations and ages, asserting as with one voice this their birthright, and to find it ratified by an express revelation. At the same time if we turn our thoughts inward upon ourselves, we may meet with a kind of secret sense concurring with the proofs of our our own immortality.

You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. "We are complaining," as you observed in a former speculation, "of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it."

Now let us consider what happens to us when

* Mean.

we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we stop our motion and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them. Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before.

This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something future remains. The use therefore I would make of it is, that since Nature (as some love to express it) does nothing in vain, or to speak properly, since the author of our being has planted no wandering passion in it, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it; and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to farther stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may to others) as a kind of instinct or natural symptom which the mind of man has of its own immortality.

'I take it at the same time for granted, that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently established by other arguments; and if so, this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds strength to the conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are creatures capable of

thought, who, in spite of every argument can form to themselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with the mass of inanimate beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The mystery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so.

This brings me back to my first observation, and gives me occasion to say further, that as worthy actions spring from worthy thoughts, so worthy thoughts are likewise the consequence of worthy actions. But the wretch who has degraded himself below the character of immortality, is very willing to resign his pretensions to it, and to substitute in its room a dark negative happiness in the extinction of his being.

The admirable Shakspeare has given us a strong image of the unsupported condition of such a person in his last minutes, in the second part of King Henry the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been concerned in the murder of the good Duke Humphry, is represented on his deathbed. After some short confused speeches, which shew an imagination disturbed with guilt, just as he is expiring, King Henry, standing by him full of compassion, says,

Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss,
Hold up thy hand, make signal of that hope!-
He dies, and makes no sign!-

'The despair which is here shewn, without a word or action on the part of a dying person, is

ཝཱ

beyond what could be painted by the most forcible expressions whatever.

I shall not pursue this thought farther, but only add, that as annihilation is not to be had with a wish, so it is the most abject thing in the world to wish it. What are honour, fame, wealth, or power, when compared with the generous expectation of a being without end, and a happiness adequate to that being?

'I shall trouble you no farther; but with a certain gravity which these thoughts have given me, I reflect upon some things people say of you, (as they will of men who distinguish themselves) which I hope are not true, and wish you as good a man as you are an author.

I am, SIR,

T.

Your most obedient
humble servant,

T. D.'

No. 211. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1711.

Fictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis,

PHEDR. 1. 1 Prol.
Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories.

HAVING lately translated the fragment of an old poet, which describes womankind under several characters, and supposes them to have drawn their different manners and dispositions from those animals and elements out of which he tells us they were compounded; I had some thoughts of giving the sex their revenge, by laying together in another paper the many vicious characters which prevail in the male world, and shewing the

different ingredients that go to the making up of such different humours and constitutions. Horace has a thought which is something akin to this, when in order to excuse himself to his mistress, for an invective which he had written against her, and to account for that unreasonable fury with which the heart of man is often transported, he tells us that, when Prometheus made his man of clay, in the kneading up the heart, he seasoned it with some furious particles of the lion. But upon turning this plan to and fro in my thoughts, I observed so many unaccountable humours in man, that I did not know out of what animals to fetch them. Male souls are diversified with so many characters, that the world has not variety of materials sufficient to furnish out their different tempers and inclinations. The creation, with all its animals and elements, would not be large enough to supply their several extravagancies.

Instead therefore of pursuing the thought of Simonides, I shall observe, that as he has exposed the vicious part of women from the doctrine of pre-existence, some of the ancient philosophers have in a manner satirized the vicious part of the human species in general, from a notion of the soul's post-existence, if I may so call it; and that as Simonides describes brutes entering into the composition of women, others have represented human souls as entering into brutes. This is commonly termed the doctrine of transmigration, which supposes that human souls, upon their leaving the body, become the souls of such kinds of brutes as they most resemble in their manners; or to give an account of it as Mr. Dryden has described in his translation of Pythagoras's speech in the fifteenth book of Ovid, where that philosopher dissuades his hearers from eating flesh: