So far as
thought is concerned, the same will take place with regard to use,
individually considered, after death, as had place before our birth.
It is said that it, is possible that we should continue to exist
in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most
unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation
the burthen of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative
of which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its
very nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding.
It is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning
which we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory
in itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters
into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly
vindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should be either
contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our
experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration
should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who
desire to be persuaded. This desire to be for ever as we are; the
reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change, which is common
to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is,
indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions
of a future state.
[1815; publ. 1840]
ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH
A FRAGMENT
The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support,
at the approach of a period of great political change, is the
abolition of the punishment of death.
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