whether there be happier creatures in the earth than themselves; all are happy, as I may say; every thing in nature is in its place. Man alone is uneasy and discontented; man alone is a prey to his desires, allows himself to be torn by fears, finds his punishment in his hopes, and becomes gloomy and unhappy in the midst even of his pleasures: man alone can meet with nothing here to fix his heart.
Whence comes this, O man? Must it not be that here thou art not in thy place; that thou art made for heaven; that thy heart is greater than the world; that the earth is not thy country; and that whatever is not God is nothing to thee? Answer, if thou canst, or rather question thy heart, and thou wilt believe.
Secondly. If all die with the body, who has been able to persuade all men, of every age, and of every country, that their soul was immortal? From whence has this strange idea of immortality descended to the human race? How could an opinion, so distant from the nature of man, were he born only for the functions of the senses, have pervaded the earth? For if man, like the beast, be created only for the present, nothing ought to be more incomprehensible to him than even the idea of immortality. Could machines of clay, whose only object should be a sensual happiness, have ever been able to form, or to find in themselves, an opinion so exalted, an idea so sublime? Nevertheless, this opinion, so extraordinary, is become that of all men; this opinion, so opposite even to the senses, since man, like the beast, dies wholly, in our sight is established on the earth; this opinion, which ought not to have even found an inventor in the universe, has been received with a universal docility of belief amongst all nations, — the most savage as the most cultivated, the most polished as the most brutal, the most incredulous as the most submissive to faith.
For, go back to the beginning of ages, examine all nations, read the history of kingdoms and empires, listen to those who return from the most distant isles; the immortality of the soul has always been, and still is, the belief of every people on the face of the earth. The knowledge of one God may have been obliterated; his glory, power, and immensity, may have been effaced, as I may say, from the hearts and minds of men; obstinate and savage nations may still live without worship, religion, or God, in this world; but they all look forward to a future state: nothing has ever been able to eradicate the opinion of the immortality of the soul; they all figure to themselves a region which our souls shall inhabit after death; and, in forgetting God, they have never discarded the idea of that provision for themselves.
Now, whence comes it that men so different in their dispositions, worship, country, opinions, interests, and even figure, that scarcely do they seem of the same species with each other, unanimously agree, however, on this point, and expect immortality r There is no collusion here; for how is it possible to assemble together men of all countries and ages? It is not a prejudice of education; for manners, habits, and worship, which are generally the consequences
