The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature. Butler Joseph

Чтение книги онлайн.

      I. The probabilities that we shall survive death.

      1. It is a law of nature that creatures should exist in different stages, and in various degrees of perfection.

      – Worms turn into flies.

      – Eggs are hatched into birds.

      – Our own present state is as different from our state in the womb, as two states of the same being can be.

      – That we shall hereafter exist in a state as different from the present as the present is from our state in the womb, is according to analogy.

      2. We now have capacities for happiness, action, misery, &c., and there is always a probability that things will continue as they are, except when experience gives us reason to think they will be altered. This is a general law; and is our only natural reason for expecting the continuance of any thing.

      3. There is no reason to apprehend that death will destroy us.

      If there was, it would arise from the nature of death; or from the analogy of nature.

      1.) Not from the nature of death.

      – We know not what death is.

      – But only some of its effects.

      – These effects do not imply the destruction of the living agent.

      – We know little of what the exercise of our powers depends upon; and nothing of what the powers themselves depend on.

      – We may be unable to exercise our powers, and yet not lose them —e. g. sleep, swoon.

      2.) Not from analogy.

      – Reason shows no connection between death and our destruction.

      – We have no faculties by which to trace any being beyond it.

      – The possession of living powers, up to the very moment when our faculties cease to be able to trace them, is a probability of their continuing.

      – We have already survived wonderful changes.

      – To live after death is analogous to the course of nature.

      II. Presumptions against a future life.

      1. That death destroys us.

      Ans. 1. This is an assumption that we are compound and material beings, and hence discerptible; which is not true.

      1.) Consciousness is a single, indivisible power, and of course the subject of it must be.

      2.) The material body is not ourself.

      3.) We can easily conceive of our having more limbs, or of a different kind, or of having more or fewer senses, or of having no bodies at all, or of hereafter animating these same bodies, remodelled.

      4.) The dissolution of a succession of new and strange bodies, would have no tendency to destroy us.

      Ans. 2. Though the absolute simplicity of the living being cannot be proved by experiment, yet facts lead us so to conclude. We lose limbs, &c. Our bodies were once very small, but we might, then, have lost part of them. There is a constant destruction and renewal going on.

      1.) Thus we see that no certain bulk is necessary to our existence, and unless it were proved that there is, and that it is larger than an indissoluble atom, there is no reason to presume that death destroys us, even if we are discerptible.

      2.) The living agent is not an internal material organism, which dies with the body. Because

      – Our only ground for this presumption is our relation to other systems of matter. But we see these are not necessary to us.

      – It will not do to say that lost portions of the body were not essential– who is to determine?

      – The relation between the living agent, and the most essential parts of the body, is only one by which they mutually affect each other.

      3.) If we regard our body as made up of organs of sense, we come to the same result.

      – We see with the eyes, just as we do with glasses. The eye is not a recipient, any more than a telescope.

      – It is not pretended that vision, hearing, &c. can be traced clear up to the percipient; but so far as we can trace perceptions, the organ does not perceive.

      – In dreams we perceive without organs.

      – When we lose a limb we do not lose the directing power; we could move a new one, if it could be made, or a wooden one. But the limb cut off has no power of moving.

      – Thus, our loss of the organs of perception and motion, not being the destruction of the power, there is no ground to think that the destruction of other organs or instruments would destroy us.

      Objection. These observations apply equally to brutes.

      Ans. 1. Be it so. Perhaps they are immortal: – may hereafter improve: we know not what latent powers they may have.

      1.) The human being at one period looks as little likely to make great intellectual attainments; for a long time he has capacities for virtue and religion, but cannot use them.

      2.) Many persons go out of the world who never became able to exercise these capacities; e. g. infants.

      Ans. 2. If brutes were immortal, it does not prove them to be moral agents.

      1.) It may be necessary, for aught we know, that there should be living creatures not moral agents, nor rational.

      2.) All difficulties as to what would become of them, are founded in our ignorance.

      2. That our souls, though not material, so depend upon the bodily structure, that we cannot survive its destruction.

      Ans. 1. Reason, memory, &c. do not depend on the body, as perceptions by the senses do. Death may destroy those instruments, and yet not destroy the powers of reflection.

      Ans. 2. Human beings СКАЧАТЬ