fficiently acquainted
with the eminent persons who flourished in the age of Cicero, and of the
first Caesars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives,
to be assured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any
serious conviction of the rewards or punishments of a future state.
At the bar and in the senate of Rome the ablest orators were not
apprehensive of giving offence to their hearers, by exposing that
doctrine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was rejected with
contempt by every man of a liberal education and understanding. [53]

[Footnote 51: In particular, the first book of the Tusculan Questions,
and the treatise De Senectute, and the Somnium Scipionis, contain, in
the most beautiful language, every thing that Grecian philosophy, on
Roman good sense, could possibly suggest on this dark but important
object.]

[Footnote 52: The preexistence of human souls, so far at least
as that doctrine is compatible with religion, was adopted by many of the
Greek and Latin fathers. See Beausobre, Hist. du Manicheisme, l. vi. c.
4.]

[Footnote 53: See Cicero pro Cluent. c. 61. Caesar ap. Sallust. de
Bell. Catilis n 50. Juvenal. Satir. ii. 149. ----Esse aliquid manes, et
subterranea regna, ----------Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aeree
lavantae.]

Since therefore the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no
further than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most,
the probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a
divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the
condition, of the invisible country which is destined to receive the
souls of men after their separation from the body. But we may perceive
several defects inherent to the popular religions of Greece and Rome,
which rendered them very unequal to so arduous a task. 1. The general
system of their mythology was unsupported by any solid proofs; and the
wisest among the Pagans had already disclaimed its usurped authority. 2.
The description of the infernal regions had been abandoned to the fancy
of painters and of poets, who peopled them with so many phantoms and
monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments with so little
equity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, was
opposed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions.
[54] 3. The doctrine of a future state was scarcely considered among the
devout polytheists of Greece and Rome as