e, or whatever else we place our happiness in, may, after all,
prove unsuccessful; whereas if we constantly and sincerely endeavour to
make ourselves happy in the other life, we are sure that our endeavours
will succeed, and that we shall not be disappointed of our hope.

8. The following question is started by one of the school-men: Supposing
the whole body of the earth were a great ball or mass of the finest
sand, and that a single grain or particle of this sand should be
annihilated every thousand years. Supposing then that you had it in your
choice to be happy all the while this prodigious mass of sand was
consuming by this slow method till there was not a grain, of it left, on
condition you were to be miserable for ever after; or supposing that you
might be happy for ever after, on condition you would be miserable till
the whole mass of sand were thus annihilated at the rate of one sand in
a thousand years: which of these two cases would you make your choice?

9. It must be confessed in this case, so many thousands of years are to
the imagination as a kind of eternity, though in reality they do not
bear so great a proportion to that duration which is to follow them, as
an unit does to the greatest number which you can put together in
figures, or as one of those sands to the supposed heap. Reason therefore
tells us, without any manner of hesitation, which would be the better
part in this choice.

10. However, as I have before intimated, our reason might in such a case
be so overset by the imagination, as to dispose some persons to sink
under the consideration of the great length of the first part of this
duration, and of the great distance of that second duration, which is to
succeed it. The mind, I say, might give itself up to that happiness
which is at hand, considering that it is so very near, and that it would
last so very long.

11. But when the choice we actually have before us, is this, whether we
will chuse to be happy for the space of only threescore and ten, nay,
perhaps of only twenty or ten years, I might say of only a day or an
hour, and miserable to all eternity; or, on the contrary, miserable for
this short term of years, and happy for a whole eternity; what words are
sufficient to express that folly and want of consideration which in such
a case makes a wrong choice?

12. I here put the case even at the worst, by supposing (what seldom
happens) that a course of virtue makes us miserable in this l