FREIND.--He has doubtless succeeded with all just spirits. They will be happy one day; if they are not so now.
BIRTON.--Happy! How? When? Who told you so?
BIRTON.--Will you tell me that we shall live eternally--that we have immortal souls, after admitting that the Jews, whom you boast of having succeeded, did not entertain this notion of immortality up to the time of Herod? This idea of an immortal soul was invented by the Brahmins, adopted by the Persians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, and was for a long time unknown to the insignificant and superstitious Jewish tribes. Alas! sir, how do we know that we have souls? or how do we know but other animals, who have similar passions, wills, appetites, and memories, so incomprehensible to us, have not souls as well?
Hitherto I have thought that there is in nature a power by which we have the faculty of life in all our body,--walking with our feet,--taking with our hands,--seeing with our eyes, feeling with our nerves, thinking with our brain,--and that all this is called the soul, which is merely a vague word, signifying the unknown principle of our faculties. With you, I will call God the intelligent principle animating nature; but has he condescended to reveal himself to us?
BIRTON.--Has he revealed his laws, or spoken to us?
FREIND.--Yes, by the voice of conscience. Is it true, that, if you killed your Father and mother, your conscience would be a prey to a remorse as terrible as it would be involuntary? Is not this truth avowed and felt throughout the world? To come down to lesser crimes,--do they not all revolt us at the first glance,--make us turn pale when we commit them for the first time,--and leave in our hearts the stings of repentance?
FREIND.--God, in thus speaking to your heart, has commanded you to abstain from crime. As for equivocal actions, which some condemn and others approve, what can we do better than follow the grand rule of Zoroaster,--"When you are not sure whether the action you are about to commit is good or bad, abstain from it."
BIRTON.--An admirable maxim, and doubtless the most beautiful ever advanced in morals. I admit that, from time to time, God has raised up men to teach virtue to their degraded fellows. I apologize to you for speaking lightly of virtue.