o a posthumous state. Now, fear is from our earliest infancy the
'never-failing companion and offspring of ignorance.' Knowledge alone
can rescue us from perpetual suffering, because all security depends
upon knowledge. Pain, moreover, is far more 'pungent' and distinct
than pleasure. 'Want and pain are natural; satisfaction and pleasure
artificial and invented.' Pain, therefore, as the strongest, will
dictate our anticipations. The hope of immortality is by the orthodox
described as a blessing; but the truth, deducible from these
principles of human nature and verified by experience, is that natural
religion, instead of soothing apprehensions, adds fresh grounds of
apprehension. A revelation, as 'Philip Beauchamp' admits, might
conceivably dispel our fears; but he would obviously say that the
religion which is taken to be revealed gives a far more vivid picture
of hell than of heaven.[612] In the next place, it is 'obvious at
first sight' that natural religion can properly give 'no rule of
guidance.' It refers us to a region of 'desperate and unfathomable'
darkness.[613] But it nevertheless indirectly suggests a pernicious
rule. It rests entirely upon conjectures as to the character of the
invisible Being who apportions pain or pleasure for inscrutable
reasons. Will this Being be expected to approve useful or pernicious
conduct? From men's language we might suppose that he is thought to be
purely benevolent. Yet from their dogmas it would seem that he is a
capricious tyrant. How are we to explain the discrepancy? The
discrepancy is the infallible result of the circumstances already
stated.[614] The Deity has limitless power, and therefore is the
natural object of our instinctive fears. The character of the Deity is
absolutely incomprehensible, and incomprehensibility in human affairs
is identical with caprice and insanity.[615] The ends and the means of
the Deity are alike beyond our knowledge; and the extremes both of
wisdom and of folly are equally unaccountable. Now, we praise or blame
human beings in order to affect their conduct towards us, to attract
favours or repel injuries. A tyrant possessed of unlimited power
considers that by simple abstinence from injury he deserves boundless
gratitude. The weak will only dare to praise, and the strong will only
blame. The slave-owner never praises and the slave never blames,
because one can use the lash while the other is subject to the lash.
If, then, we regard the invisi