has always imagined that death is utter
annihilation should in some way suddenly acquire knowledge that an
endless existence immediately succeeds the termination of this:
what would be the legitimate instructions of his new information?
Before we can fairly answer this inquiry, we need to know what
relations connect the two states of existence. A knowledge of the
law and method and means of man's destiny is more important for
his guidance than the mere ascertainment of its duration. With
reference to the query before us, four hypotheses are conceivable.
If, in the first place, there be no connection whatever except
that of temporal sequence between the present life and the future,
then, so far as duty is concerned, the expectation of a world to
come yields not the slightest practical application for the
experience that now is. It can only be a source of comfort or of
terror; and that will be accordingly as it is conceived under the
aspect of benignity or of vengeance. If, secondly, the character
of the future life depend on conditions to be fulfilled here, but
those conditions be not within our control, then, again, no
inferences of immediate duty can be drawn from the apprehended
hereafter. Being quasi actors in a scene prearranged and with a
plot predetermined, we can no more be capable of any obligation or
choice, in regard to the end, than puppets which some unseen
Harlequin moves by the terrible wires of primitive decree or
transmitted depravity towards the genial or the tragic crisis. If
the soul's fate there is to be heaven or hell according to the
part enacted here, it must have free will and a fair opportunity
to work the unmarred problem safely out. Otherwise the future life
is reduced, as far as it affects us here, to a mere source of
complacency or of horror as it respectively touches the elect and
the reprobate.

Thirdly, it may be conceived that the future life is a state of
everlasting reward and punishment unchangeably decided by the way
in which the probationary period allotted on

1 The only direct treatise on the subject known to us is
Tilemann's Kritik der Unsterblichkeitslehre in Ansehung des
Sittengesetzes, published in 1789. And this we have not seen.

earth is passed through. Here are men, for a brief time, free to
act thus or otherwise. Do thus, and the endless bliss of heaven is
won. Do otherwise, and the endless agony of hell is incurred. The
plain rule of action yielded by this doctri