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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
MORTALITY
OB'
the soul
BY
. DAVID HUME.
Reprinted from the Original Edition of liS->
WITH
An Introduction
by
G. AV. Foote.
Price Twopence.
LONDON
progressive PUBLISHING company,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.O.
1890.
�LONDON:
TRUSTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE
AT 2ft STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�1
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By G. W. FOOTE.
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Referring to David Hume, in his lecture on the Physical
m
ine rny
Basis of Life, Professor Huxley speaks of “ the vigor of thought
and the exquisite clearness of style of the man whom I make
bold to term the most acute thinker of the eighteenth century
—even though that century produced Kant.”* Even Carlyle
assigns Hume a place “ among the greatest,”! which for a
writer like Carlyle to a thinker like Hume is a remarkable
tribute. No less clearly is the Scotch philosopher’s greatness
acknowledged by Joseph de Maistre, the foremost champion of
the Papacy in this century. “ I believe,” he says, “taking all
into account, that the eighteenth century, so fertile in this
respect, did not produce a single enemy of religion who can be
compared with him. His cold venom is far more dangerous
than the foaming rage of Voltaire. If ever, among men who
have heard the gospel preached, there has existed a veritable
Atheist (which I will not undertake to decide) it is he. +
Hume’s influence has been felt through the whole course of
philosophy since his day, and the writings of such a man—so
lucid, yet so profound; so acute, yet so comprehensive—can
never be neglected. Upon religious topics, no less than on
political and philosophical, he was singularly penetrative. His
Essay on Miracles is the starting-point of all subsequent dis
cussions of that most vital element of the Christian faith; his
Natural History of Religion strikingly anticipates many of
the teachings of modern Evolution; and his Dialogues on
* Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 141.
t Essays (People’s Edition), vol. iv., p. 130.
t Lettres sur I’Inquisition, pp. 147, 148.
�iv.
Introduction.
Religion turn the arguments of Theism in every possible
light, leaving little but elaboration to his successors.
In the ordinary editions of Hume’s Essays the following
reprint is not to be found. This essay was published for- the first
time after his death, at Edinburgh, in 1789, by C. Hunter, Par
liament Square. It was the second of two posthumous essays,
the first being a remarkable essay on Suicide. A copy of the
original edition has been faithfully followed in this reprint.
Not a word has been changed, but such forms as “ ’tis ” have
been brought into accord with the sedater fashion of to-day,
and the frequent dashes in the midst of long passages have
been treated as the marks of fresh paragraphs.
Professor Huxley, whose thoroughness is apparent to all who
follow him, gives the title of this essay On the Immortality of
the Soul, but the word used on the original title-page is
mortality, which indicates the author’s argument. This is a
mere inadvertence, however, for Huxley is well acquainted
with the essay, and gives long extracts from it in his splendid
little volume on Hume. He calls it a “ remarkable essay,”
*
and “ a model of clear and vigorous statement.” It long
remained but little known, but “ possibly for that reason its
influence has been manifested in unexpected quarters, and its
main arguments have been adduced by archiépiscopal and
episcopal authority in evidence of the value of revelation. Dr.
Whately, sometime Archbishop of Dublin, paraphrases Hume,
though he forgets to cite him ; and Bishop Courtenay’s elabo
rate work, dedicated to the Archbishop, is a development of
that prelate’s version of Hume’s essay.”
Anyone who turns to the first essay in Whately’s Some
Peculiarities of the Christian Religion will perceive the truth
of these remarks, at least with respect to the Archbishop.
Sometimes he follows Hume step by step, and even uses his
very illustrations. But Hume himself had doubtless profited
by the arguments of Anthony Collins in his replies to Dr.
Samuel Clarke’s letters to Dodwell. Clarke argued for the
Immateriality of the Soul, and Collins for its Materiality ; and,
as Huxley elsewhere admits, Collins had by far the best of the
discussion. He wrote, says Huxley, with “ wonderful power
and closeness of reasoning,” and “in this battle the Goliath of
* Hume, English Men of Letters Series.
�Introduction.
V.
Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered
*
Orthodoxy.
Some readers may notice one omission in Hume’s essay. He
does not refer, as Huxley remarks, to “ the sentimental argu
ments for the immortality of the soul which are so much in
vogue at the present day,” and a perhaps he did not think
them worth notice.” But he does fence them by anticipation
in saying thata All doctrines are to be suspected which are
favored by our passions.” Nothing but man’s overweening
egotism could induce him to think that he will live for ever
because he would like to; and that such an argument for a future
life should be put forward by theologians, only proves what is so
obvious on many other grounds, that religion, with all its fine
pretences, is constantly appealing to the blind irrationality of
individual selfishness.
We must conclude this Preface with a word of warning to
the reader. Let him not be misled by the opening and closing
paragraphs of Hume’s essay into supposing that the great
sceptic deferred to the authority of Revelation. They are only
his ironical bows to orthodoxy. He indulges in the same
gestures in his Essay on Miracles. This has brought upon
him, as it brought upon Gibbon, a charge of disingenuousness.
But both of those masters of irony were perfectly aware that
every sensible man understood them. If they wore a mask, it
was transparent, and did not conceal their features; and those
who upheld the Blasphemy Laws for the persecution of
Freethinkers, had no right to complain when conformity was
yielded with an expressive grimace.
Critiques and Adresses, “ The Metaphysics of Sensation.’
��The Mortality of the Soul.
By DAVID HUME.
By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove
the Immortality of the Soul; the arguments for it are
commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or
moral or physical. But in reality it is the Gospel and
the Gospel alone, that has brought 'ft/e and immor
tality to light.
I. Metaphysical topics suppose that the Soul is
immaterial, and that it is impossible for thought to
belong to a material substance. But just metaphysics
teach us that the notion of substance is wholly confused
and imperfect, and that we have no other idea of any
substance, than as an aggregate of particular qualities,
inhering in an unknown something. Matter, there
fore, and spirit, are at bottom equally unknown, and
we cannot determine what qualities inhere in the one
or in the other. They likewise teach us that nothing
can be decided a priori concerning any cause or effect
and that experience being the only source of our judg
ments of this nature we cannot know from any other
principle, whether matter by its structure or arrange
ment, may not be the cause of thought. Abstract
reasonings cannot decide any question of fact or
existence. But admitting a spiritual substance to be
dispersed throughout the universe, like the etherial fire
of the Stoics, and to be the only inherent subject of
�8
The Mortality of the Soul.
thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy that
nature uses it after the same manner she does the other
substance matter. She employs it as a kind of paste or
clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences ;
dissolves after a time each modification, and from its
substance erects a new form. As the same material
substance may successively compose the body of all
.animals, the same spiritual substance may compose
their minds. Their consciousness, or that system of
thought which they formed during life may be con
tinually dissolved by death. And nothing interests
them in the new modification. The most positive
assertors of the morality of the Soul, never denied the
immortality of its substance. And that an immaterial
substance as well as a material, may lose its memory
or consciousness appears in part from experience, if the
Soul be immaterial.
Reasoning from the common course of nature,
and without supporting any new interposition of
the supreme cause, which ought always to be excluded
from philosophy, what is incorruptible must also be
ingenerable. The Soul therefore, if immortal, existed
before our birth; and if the former existence no
ways concerned us, neither will the latter.
Animals undoubtedly feel, think, love, hate, will,
and even reason, though in a more imperfect manner
than men ; are their Souls also immaterial and
immortal ?
II. Let us now consider the moral arguments, chiefly
those derived from the justice of God, which is sup
posed to be farther interested in the farther punish
ment of the vicious and reward of the virtuous.
But these arguments are grounded on the supposition
that God has attributes beyond what he has exerted in
this universe, with which alone we are acquainted.
Whence do we infer the existence of these attributes ?
�The Mortality of the Soul.
9
It is very safe for us to affirm that whatever we know
the Deity to have actually done, is best; but it is very
dangerous to affirm, that he must always do what
to us seems best. In how many instances would
this reasoning fail us with regard to the present
world ?
But if any purpose of nature be clear, we may affirm,
that the whole scope and intention of man’s creation,
so far as we can judge by natural reason, is limited to
the present life. With how weak a concern from the
original inherent structure of the mind and passions,
does he ever look farther ? What comparison either
for steadiness or efficacy, betwixt so floating an idea,
and the most doubtful persuasion of any matter of fact
that occurs in common life. There arise indeed in
some minds some unaccountable terrors with regard to
futurity; but these would quickly vanish were they
not artificially fostered by precept and education.
And those who foster them ; what is their motive ?
Only to gain a livelihood, and to acquire power and
riches in this world. Their very zeal and industry
therefore is an argument against them.
What cruelty, what iniquity, what injustice in
nature, to confine all our concern, as well as all our
knowledge, to the present life, if there be another
scene still waiting us, of infinitely greater consequence ?
Ought this barbarous deceit to be ascribed to a benificent
and wise being ?
Observe with what exact proportion the task to be
performed and the performing powers are adjusted
throughout all nature. If the reason of man gives
him a great superiority above other animals, his neces
sities are proporti onably multiplied upon him ; his
whole time, his whole capacity, activity, courage,
passion, find sufficient employment in fencing against
the miseries of his present condition, and frequently,
�10
The Mortality of the Soul.
nay almost always, are too slender for the business
assigned them.
A pair of shoes perhaps was never yet wrought to
the highest degree of perfection which that commodity
is capable of attaining. Yet it is necessary, at least very
useful, that there should be some politicians and
moralists, even some geometers, poets and philosophers
among mankind. The powers of men are no more
superior to their wants, considered merely in this life,
than those of foxes and hares are, compared to their
wants, and to their period of existence. The inference
from parity of reason is therefore obvious.
On the theory of the Soul’s mortality, the inferiority
of women’s capacity is easily accounted for. Their
domestic life requires no higher faculties, either of
mind or body.
This circumstance vanishes and
becomes absolutely insignificant, on the religious
theory : The one sex has an equal task to perform as
the other ; their powers of reason and resolution ought
also to have been equal and both of them infinitely
greater than at present. As every effect implies a
cause, and that another, till we reach the first cause of
all, which is the Deity ; everything that happens is
ordained by him, and nothing can be the object of his
punishment or vengeance.
By what rule are punishments and rewards dis
tributed ? What is the divine standard of merit and
demerit? Shall we suppose that human sentiments
have place in the Deity ? How bold that hypothesis.
We have no conception of any other sentiments.
According to human sentiments, sense, courage, good
manners, industry, prudence, genius, etc., are essential
parts of personal merits. Shall we therefore erect an
asylum for poets and heroes like that of the ancient
mythology ? Why confine all rewards to one species
of virtue? Punishment without any proper end or
�The Mortality of the Soul.
11
purpose is inconsistent with our ideas of goodness and
justice, and no end can be served by it after the whole
scene is closed. Punishment according to our concep
tion, should bear some proportion to the offence. Why
then eternal punishment for the temporary offences of
so frail a creature as man ? Can anyone approve of
Alexander's rage, who intended to exterminate a whole
nation because they had seized his favorite horse
Bucephalus ?
*
Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of
men, the good and the bad ; but the greatest part of
mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.
Were one to go round the world with an intention of
giving a good supper to the righteous, and a sound
drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be
embarrassed in his choice, and would find that the
merits and demerits of most men and women scarcely
amount to the value of either.
To suppose measures of approbation and blame
different from the human confounds everything.
Whence do we learn that there is such a thing as moral
distinctions, but from our own sentiments ?
What man who has not met with personal provocation
(or what good natured man who has) could inflict on
crimes, from the sense of blame alone, even the com
mon. legal, frivolous punishments ? And does anything
steel the breast of judges and juries against the senti
ments of humanity but reflection on necessity and
public interest? By the Roman law those who had
been guilty of parricide and confessed their crime,
were put into a sack along with an ape, a dog, and a
serpent and thrown into the river. Death alone was
the punishment of those who denied their guilt, how
ever fully proved. A criminal was tried before
Quint. Curtius lib. vi., cap. 5.
�12
The Mortality of the Soul.
Augustus and condemned after a full conviction, but
the humane emperor when he put the last interrogatory,
gave it such a turn as to lead the wretch into a denial
of his guilt. “ You surely (said the prince) did not
kill your father.”* This lenity suits our natural ideas
of right even towards the greatest of all criminals, and
even though it prevents so inconsiderable a sufferance.
Nay even the most bigoted priest would naturally
without reflection approve of it, provided the crime
was not heresy or infidelity ; for as these crimes hurt
himself in his temporal interest and advantages,
perhaps he may not be altogether so indulgent to them.
The chief source of moral ideas is the reflection on
the interest of human society. Ought these interests
so short, so frivolous, to be guarded by punishments
eternal and infinite ? The damnation of one man is an
infinitely greater evil in the universe than the sub
version of a thousand millions of kingdoms. Nature
has rendered human infancy peculiarly frail and
mortal, as in were on purpose to refute the notion of a
probationary state ; the half of mankind die bfore they
are rational creatures.
III. The Physical arguments from the analogy of
nature are strong for the mortality of the soul, and are
really the only philosophical arguments which ought
to be admitted with regard to this question, or indeed
any question of fact.
Where any two objects are so closely connected that
all alterations which we have ever seen in the one, are
attended with proportional alterations in the other ; we
ought to conclude by all rules of analogy, that, when
there are still greater alterations produced in the
former, and it is totally dissolved, there follows a total
dissolution of the latter.
* Suet. Augus. cap. 3.
�The Mortality of the Soul.
13
Sleep, a very small effect on the body, is attended
with a temporary extinction, at least a great confusion
of the soul.
The weakness of the body and that of the mind in
infancy are exactly proportioned, their vigor in man
hood, their sympathetic disorder in sickness, their
common gradual decay in old age. The step further
seems unavoidable ; their common dissolution in death.
The last symptoms which the mind discovers are dis
order, weakness, insensibility, stupidity, the fore
runners of its annihilation. The farther progress of
the same causes increasing, the same effects totally
extinguish it. Judging by the usual analogy of nature,
no form can continue when transferred to a condition
of life very different from the original one, in which
it was placed. Trees perish in the water, fishes in the
air, animals in the earth. Even so small a difference
as that of climate is often fatal. What reason then to
imagine, that an immense alteration such as is made
on the soul by the dissolution of its body and all its
organs of thought and sensation can be effected with
out the dissolution of the whole ? Everything is in
common betwixt soul and body. The organs of the
one are all of them the organs of the other. The
existence therefore of the one must be dependent on
that of the other.
The souls of animals are allowed to be mortal;
and these bear so near a resemblance to the souls of
men, that the analogy from one to the other forms a
very strong argument. Their bodies are not more
resembling ; yet no one rejects the argument drawn
from comparative anatomy. The Metempsychosis is
therefore the only system of this kind that philosophy
can hearken to.
Nothing in this world is perpetual, everything
however seemingly firm is in continual flux and change,
�14
lhe Mortality of the Soul.
the world itself gives symptoms of frailty and dis
solution.
How contrary to analogy, therefore, to
imagine that one single form, seemingly the frailest of
any, and subject to the greatest disorders, is immortal
and indissoluble ? What a daring theory is that; how
lightly, not to say, how rashly entertained! How to
dispose of the infinite numbers of posthumous exist
ences ought also to embarrass the religious theory.
Every planet in every solar system, we are at
liberty to imagine peopled with intelligent mortal
beings, at least we can fix on no other supposition. For
these then a new universe must every generation
be created beyond the bounds of the present universe,
or one must have been created at first so prodigiously
wide as to admit of this continual influx of beings.
Ought such bold suppositions to be received by any
philosophy, and that merely on the pretext of a bare
possibility ? When it is asked whether Agamemnon,
Thersites, Hannibal, Varro, and every stupid clown
that ever existed in Italy, Scythia, Bactria or Guinea
are now alive ; can any man think, that a scrutiny of
nature will furnish arguments strong enough to answer
so strange a question in the affirmative ? The want of
argument without revelation sufficiently establishes
the negative.
“Quante facilius (says Pliny
}
*
certius que sibi
quemque credere, ac specimen securitatis antigene tali
sumere experimento." Our insensibility before the
composition of the body, seems to natural reason a
proof of a like state after dissolution.
Were our horror of annihilation an original passion,
not the effect of our general love of happiness, it would
rather prove the mortality of the soul. For as nature
does nothing in vain, she would never give us a horror
* Lib. 7, cap. 55.
�The Mortality of the Soul.
15
against an impossible event. She may give us a horror
against an unavoidable event provided our endeavors,
as in the present case may often remove it to some
distance. Death is in the end unavoidable; yet the
human species could not be preserved had not
nature inspired us with an aversion towards it. All
doctrines are to be suspected which are favored by
our passions, and the hopes and fears which gave rise
to this doctrine are very obvious.
It is an infinite advantage in every controversy to
defend the negative. If the question be out of the
common experienced course of nature, this circum
stance is almost if not altogether decisive. By what
arguments or analogies can we prove any state of
existence, which no one ever saw, and which no way
resembles any that ever was seen ? Who will repose
such trust in any pretended philosophy as to admit
upon its testimony the reality of so marvellous a
scene ? Some new species of logic is requisite for that
purpose, and some new faculties of the mind that may
enable us to comprehend that logic.
Nothing could set in a fuller light the infinite
obligations which mankind have to divine revelation,
since we find that no other medium could ascertain
this great and important truth.
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.
“ColUns states "the arguments against human freedom with a logical
force unsurpassed by any Necessitarian. —Prof A. C. Eraser.
_ „
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�
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The mortality of the soul
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Hume, David [1711-1776]
Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the original edition of 789. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. Includes bibliographical references. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1890
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N316
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Soul
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Immortality
NSS
Soul