hten him, and that if he
were not ruled by the love and fear of men whom he had seen, neither
would he be so by that of the gods whom he had not seen.

At one time indeed I came upon a small but growing sect who believed,
after a fashion, in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection from
the dead; they taught that those who had been born with feeble and
diseased bodies and had passed their lives in ailing, would be tortured
eternally hereafter; but that those who had been born strong and healthy
and handsome would be rewarded for ever and ever. Of moral qualities or
conduct they made no mention.

Bad as this was, it was a step in advance, inasmuch as they did hold out
a future state of some sort, and I was shocked to find that for the most
part they met with opposition, on the score that their doctrine was based
upon no sort of foundation, also that it was immoral in its tendency, and
not to be desired by any reasonable beings.

When I asked how it could be immoral, I was answered, that if firmly
held, it would lead people to cheapen this present life, making it appear
to be an affair of only secondary importance; that it would thus distract
men's minds from the perfecting of this world's economy, and was an
impatient cutting, so to speak, of the Gordian knot of life's problems,
whereby some people might gain present satisfaction to themselves at the
cost of infinite damage to others; that the doctrine tended to encourage
the poor in their improvidence, and in a debasing acquiescence in ills
which they might well remedy; that the rewards were illusory and the
result, after all, of luck, whose empire should be bounded by the grave;
that its terrors were enervating and unjust; and that even the most
blessed rising would be but the disturbing of a still more blessed
slumber.

To all which I could only say that the thing had been actually known to
happen, and that there were several well-authenticated instances of
people having died and come to life again--instances which no man in his
senses could doubt.

"If this be so," said my opponent, "we must bear it as best we may."

I then translated for him, as well as I could, the noble speech of Hamlet
in which he says that it is the fear lest worse evils may befall us after
death which alone prevents us from rushing into death's arms.

"Nonsense," he answered, "no man was ever yet stopped from cutting his
throat by any such fears as your poet ascribes to him--and