For, in the first place, we find it _necessary_ that he should desire immortality. The prospect of annihilation must always strike the mind with horror. By nature it is capable of conceiving, of appreciating and desiring, future as well as present happiness. Its ideas and desires cannot be bounded by a day or a year, but extend onward, without the possibility of arriving at a limit. Whenever therefore the imagination is presented with a termination of enjoyment, however distant in the field of duration it may be, the mind at once starts back with a feeling of present unhappiness.
It is especially the case that this desire will not allow the mind to be consoled for the supposed termination of its existence by the possession of some other enjoyment. The object is something which cannot be supplanted by any other. It is indeed the mind's susceptibility to be gratified by its connection with other objects, which is the foundation of this desire. It desires continued existence in proportion as it feels the loveliness by which it is surrounded, and of the actions which it is invited to perform. It never so much feels the vanity of any pleasure as when that pleasure is about to terminate. Very far then must the possession of other enjoyments be from compensating for the want of this! Nay, so much livelier as is the joy which the present seems to offer, so much severer will be the pang when the mind looks forward to futurity.
The hurry of novelty and the splendor of dazzling objects may induce temporary forgetfulness, but forgetfulness is not consolation; and of little worth must be that freedom from misery which is only in proportion as the mind loses its activity. It is indeed in some degree to run into the very evil we dread, to escape the consciousness of knowing we must be subject to its consequences. Beside, in spite of such means the mind will often be aroused to a more painful remembrance of its mortality. The opiates which for a time may lull, are yet preparing morbid sensibilities to be restless under the oblivious influence, and to awaken at length to a more acute feeling of the pain that has been suppressed. Yet who can believe there is a single faculty in the mind which must ever desire, without rational hope, and whose despair must be without solace?