ty 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.

Whatever might be the origin of this doctrine, it was eagerly adopted
by the Christians, who judged it very convenient to their system of
religion, all the parts of which are founded on the marvellous, and
which made it a crime to admit any truths agreeable to reason and
common sense. Thus, without going back to the inventors of this
inconceivable dogma, let us examine dispassionately what this opinion
really is; let us endeavor to penetrate to the principles on which it
is supported; let us adopt it, if we shall find it an idea conformable
to reason; let us reject it, if it shall appear destitute of proof,
and at variance with common sense, even though it had been received as
an established truth in all antiquity, though it may have been adopted
by many millions of mankind.

Those who maintain the opinion of the soul's immortality, regard
it--that is, the soul--as a being distinct from the body, as a
substance, or essence, totally different from the corporeal frame, and
they designate it by the name of _spirit_. If we ask them what a
spirit is, they tell us it is not matter; and if we ask them what they
understand by that which is not matter, which is the only thing of
which we cannot form an idea, they tell us it is a spirit. In general,
it is easy to see that men the most savage, as well as the most subtle
thinkers, make use of the word _spirit_ to designate all the causes of
which they cannot form clear notions; hence the word spirit hath been
used to designate a being of which none can