ife: but if
we suppose (as it generally happens) that virtue will make us more happy
even in this life than a contrary course of vice; how can we
sufficiently admire the stupidity or madness of those persons who are
capable of making so absurd a choice?

13. Every wise man, therefore, will consider this life only as it may
conduce to the happiness of the other, and cheerfully sacrifice the
pleasures of a few years to those of an eternity.

_On the Immortality of the Soul_.

SPECTATOR, No. 111.

1. I was yesterday walking alone in one of my friend's woods, and lost
myself in it very agreeably, as I was running over in my mind the
several arguments that establish this great point, which is the basis of
morality, and the source of all the pleasing hopes and secret joys that
can arise in the heart of a reasonable creature.

2. I considered those several proofs drawn: _First_, From the nature of
the soul itself, and particualrly its immateriality; which, though not
absolutely necessary to the eternity of its duration, has, I think, been
evinced to almost a demonstration.

_Secondly_, From its passions and sentiments, as particularly from, its
love of existence; its horror of annihilation, and its hopes of
immortality, with that secret satisfaction which it finds in the
practice of virtue, and that uneasiness which follows in it upon the
commission of vice.

3. _Thirdly_, From the nature of the Supreme Being, whose justice,
goodness, wisdom and veraveracity, are all concerned in this point.

But among these and other excellent arguments for the immortality of the
soul, there is one drawn from the perpetual progress of the soul to its
perfection, without a possibility of ever arriving at it; which is a
hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved by others
who have written on this subject, though it seeras to me to carry a very
great weight with it.

4. How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul which is
capable of such immense perfection, and of receiving new improvements to
all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is
created? are such abilities made for no purpose? A brute arrives at a
point of perfection that he can never pass: in a few years he has all
the endowments he is capable of; and were he to live ten thousand more,
would be the same thing he is at present.

5. Were a human soul thus at a stand in her accomplishments, were her
faculties to be