Of the Immortality of the Soul, and of the Dogma of another Life.
We, have now, Madam, come to the examination of the dogma of a future life, in which it is supposed that the Divinity, after causing men to pass through the temptations, the trials, and the difficulties of this life, for the purpose of satisfying himself whether they are worthy of his love or his hatred, will bestow the recompenses or inflict the chastisements which they deserved. This dogma, which is one of the capital points of the Christian religion, is founded on a great many hypotheses or suppositions, which we have already glanced at, and which we have shown to be absurd and incompatible with the notions which the same religion gives us of the Deity. In effect, it supposes us capable of offending or pleasing the Author of Nature, of influencing his humor, or exciting his passions; afflicting, tormenting, resisting, and thwarting the plans of Deity. It supposes, moreover, the free-will of man--a system which we have seen incompatible with the goodness, justice, and omnipotence of the Deity. It supposes, further, that God has occasion of proving his creatures, and making them, if I may so speak, pass a novitiate to know what they are worth when he shall square accounts with them. It supposes in God, who has created men for happiness only, the inability to put, by one grand effort, all men in the road, whence they may infallibly arrive at permanent felicity. It supposes that man will survive himself, or that the same being, after death, will continue to think, to feel, and act as he did in this life. In a word, it supposes the immortality of the soul--an opinion unknown to the Jewish lawgiver, who is totally silent on this topic to the people to whom God had manifested himself; an opinion which even in the time of Jesus Christ one sect at Jerusalem admitted, while another sect rejected; an opinion about which the Messiah, who came to instruct them, deigned to fix the ideas of those who might deceive themselves in this respect; an opinion which appears to have been engendered in Egypt, or in India, anterior to the Jewish religion, but which was unknown among the Hebrews till they took occasion to instruct themselves in the Pagan philosophy of the Greeks, and doctrines of Plato.