On the IMMORTALITY of the SOUL, BOOK I

To all inferior animals 'tis giv'n T' enjoy the state allotted them by Heaven; No vain researches e'er disturb their rest, No fears of dark futurity molest. Man, only Man sollicitous to know The springs whence Nature's operations flow, Plods thro' a dreary waste with toil and pain, And reasons, hopes, and thinks, and lives in vain; For sable Death still hov'ring o'er his head, Cuts short his progress, with his vital thread, Wherefore, since Nature errs not, do we find These seeds of Science in the human mind, If no congenial fruits are predesign'd? For what avails to Man this pow'r to roam Thro' ages past, and ages yet to come, T' explore new worlds o'er all th' aetherial way, Chain'd to a spot, and living but a day? Since all must perish in one common grave, Nor can these long laborious searches save. Were it not wiser far, supinely laid, To sport with Phyllis in the noontide shade? Or at thy jovial festivals appear, Great Bacchus, who alone the soul can clear From all that it has felt, and all that it can fear?

Come on then, let us feast: let Chloe sing, And soft Neaera touch the trembling string; Enjoy the present hour, nor seek to know What good or ill to-morrow may bestow. But these delights soon pall upon the taste; Let's try then if more serious cannot last: Wealth let us heap on wealth, or fame pursue, Let pow'r and glory be our points in view; In courts, in camps, in senates let us live, Our levees crowded like the buzzing hive: Each weak attempt the same sad lesson brings, Alas, what vanity in human things!

What means then shall we try? where hope to find A friendly harbour for the restless mind? Who still, you see, impatient to obtain Knowledge immense, (so Nature's laws ordain) Ev'n now, tho' fetter'd in corporeal clay, Climbs step by step the prospect to survey, And seeks, unweary'd, Truth's eternal ray. No fleeting joys she asks, which must depend On the frail senses, and with them must end; But such as suit her own immortal fame, Free from all change, eternally the same.

Take courage then, these joys we shall attain; Almighty Wisdom never acts in vain; Nor shall the soul, on which it has bestow'd Such pow'rs, e'er perish, like an earthly clod; But purg'd at length from foul corruption's stain, Freed from her prison, and unbound her chain, She shall her native strength, and native skies regain: To heav'n an old inhabitant return, And draw nectareous streams from truth's perpetual urn.

Whilst life remains, (if life it can be call'd T' exist in fleshly bondage thus enthrall'd) Tir'd with the dull pursuit of worldly things, The soul scarce wakes, or opes her gladsome wings, Yet still the godlike exile in disgrace Retains some marks of her celestial race; Else whence from Mem'ry's store can she produce Such various thoughts, or range them so for use? Can matter these contain, dispose, apply? Can in her cells such mighty treasures lye? Or can her native force produce them to the eye?

Whence is this pow'r, this foundress of all arts, Serving, adorning life, thro' all its parts, Which names impos'd, by letters mark'd those names, Adjusted properly by legal claims, From woods, and wilds collected rude mankind, And cities, laws, and governments design'd? What can this be, but some bright ray from heaven, Some emanation from Omniscience given?

When now the rapid stream of Eloquence Bears all before it, passion, reason, sense, Can its dread thunder, or its lightning's force Derive their essence from a mortal source? What think you of the bard's enchanting art, Which, whether he attempts to warm the heart With fabled scenes, or charm the ear with rhyme, Breathes all pathetic, lovely, and sublime? Whilst things on earth roll round from age to age, The same dull force repeated; on the stage The poet gives us a creation new, More pleasing, and more perfect than the true; The mind, who always to perfection hastes, Perfection, such as here she never tastes, With gratitude accepts the kind deceit, And thence foresees a system more compleat. Of those what think you, who the circling race Of suns, and their revolving planets trace, And comets journeying thro' unbounded space? Say, can you doubt, but that th' all-searching soul, That now can traverse heav'n from pole to pole, From thence descending visits but this earth, And shall once more regain the regions of her birth?

Cou'd she thus act, unless some Power unknown, From matter quite distinct, and all her own, Supported, and impell'd her? She approves Self-conscious, and condemns; she hates, and loves, Mourns, and rejoices, hopes, and is afraid, Without the body's unrequested aid: Her own internal strength her reason guides, By this she now compares things, now divides; Truth's scatter'd fragments piece by piece collects, Rejoins, and thence her edifice erects; Piles arts on arts, effects to causes ties, And rears th' aspiring fabric to the skies: From whence, as on a distant plain below, She sees from causes consequences flow, And the whole chain distinctly comprehends, Which from th' Almighty's throne to earth descends: And lastly, turning inwardly her eyes, Perceives how all her own ideas rise, Contemplates what she is, and whence she came, And almost comprehends her own amazing frame. Can mere machines be with such pow'rs endued, Or conscious of those pow'rs, suppose they cou'd? For body is but a machine alone Mov'd by external force, and impulse not its own.

Rate not th' extension of the human mind By the plebeian standard of mankind, But by the size of those gigantic few, Whom Greece and Rome still offer to our view; Or Britain well-deserving equal praise, Parent of heroes too in better days. Why shou'd I try her num'rous sons to name By verse, law, eloquence consign'd to fame? Or who have forc'd fair Science into sight Long lost in darkness, and afraid of light. O'er all superior, like the solar ray First Bacon usher'd in the dawning day, And drove the mists of sophistry away; Pervaded nature with amazing force, Following experience still throughout his course, And finishing at length his destin'd way To Newton he bequeath'd the radiant lamp of day.

Illustrious souls! if any tender cares Affect angelic breasts for man's affairs, If in your present happy heav'nly state, You're not regardless quite of Britain's fate, Let this degen'rate land again be blest With that true vigour, which she once possest; Compel us to unfold our slumb'ring eyes And to our ancient dignity to rise. Such wond'rous pow'rs as these must sure be giv'n For most important purposes by heav'n; Who bids these stars as bright exemples shine Besprinkled thinly by the hand divine, To form to virtue each degenerate time, And point out to the soul its origin sublime. That there's a self which after death shall live, All are concern'd about, and all believe; That something's ours, when we from life depart This all conceive, all feel it at the heart; The wise of learn'd antiquity proclaim This truth, the public voice declares the same; No land so rude but looks beyond the tomb For future prospects in a world to come. Hence, without hopes to be in life repaid, We plant slow oaks posterity to shade; And hence vast pyramids aspiring high Lift their proud heads alost, and time defy. Hence is our love of same, a love so strong, We think no dangers great, or labors long, By which we hope our beings to extend, And to remotest times in glory to descend.

For fame the wretch beneath the gallows lies Disowning every crime for which he dies; Of life profuse, tenacious of a name, Fearless of death, and yet afraid of shame. Nature has wove into the human mind This anxious care for names we leave behind, T' extend our narrow views beyond the tomb, And give an earnest of a life to come: For, if when dead, we are but dust or clay, Why think of what posterity shall say? Her praise, or censure cannot us concern, Nor ever penetrate the silent urn.

What mean the nodding plumes, the fun'ral train, And marble monument, that speaks in vain, With all those cares, which ev'ry nation pays To their unfeeling dead in diff'rent ways! Some in the slower-strewn grave the corpse have lay'd, And annual obsequies around it pay'd, As if to please the poor departed shade; Others on blazing piles the body burn, And store their ashes in the faithful urn; But all in one great principle agree To give a fancy'd immortality. Why shou'd I mention those, whose ouzy soil Is render'd fertile by th' o'erflowing Nile, Their dead they bury not, nor burn with fires, No graves they dig, erect no sun'ral pires, But, washing first th' embowel'd body clean, Gums, spice, and melted pitch they pour within; Then with strong fillets bind it round and round, To make each flaccid part compact, and sound; And lastly paint the varnish'd surface o'er With the same features, which in life it wore: So strong their presage of a future state, And that our nobler part survives the body's fate.

Nations behold remote from reason's beams, Where Indian Ganges rolls his sandy streams, Of life impatient rush into the fire, And willing victims to their gods expire! Persuaded the loose soul to regions flies, Blest with eternal spring, and cloudless skies.

Nor is less fam'd the oriental wife For stedfast virtue, and contempt of life: These heroines mourn not with loud female cries Their husbands lost, or with o'erflowing eyes, But, strange to tell! their funeral piles ascend, And in the same sad flames their sorrows end; In hopes with them beneath the shades to rove, And there renew their interrupted love.

In climes where Boreas breathes eternal cold, See numerous nations, warlike, fierce, and bold, To battle all unanimously run, Nor fire, nor sword, nor instant death they shun: Whence this disdain of life in ev'ry breast, But from a notion on their minds imprest, That all, who for their country die, are blest. Add too to these the once prevailing dreams, Of sweet Elysian groves, and Stygian streams: All shew with what consent mankind agree In the firm hope of Immortality. Grant these th' inventions of the crafty priest, Yet such inventions never cou'd subsist, Unless some glimm'rings of a future state Were with the mind coaeval, and innate: For ev'ry fiction, which can long persuade, In truth must have its first foundations laid.

Because we are unable to conceive, How unembody'd souls can act, and live, The vulgar give them forms, and limbs, and faces, And habitations in peculiar places; Hence reasoners more refin'd, but not more wise, Struck with the glare of such absurdities, Their whole existence fabulous suspect, And truth and falsehood in a lump reject; Too indolent to learn what may be known, Or else too proud that ignorance to own. For hard's the task the daubing to pervade Folly and fraud on Truth's fair form have laid; Yet let that task be ours; for great the prize; Nor let us Truth's caelestial charms despise, Because that priests, or poets may disguise.

That there's a God from Nature's voice is clear, And yet what errors to this truth adhere? How have the fears and follies of mankind Now multiply'd their gods, and now subjoin'd To each the frailties of the human mind? Nay superstition spread at length so wide, Beasts, birds, and onions too were deify'd.

Th' Athenian sage revolving in his mind This weakness, blindness, madness of mankind, Foretold, that in maturer days, tho' late, When Time should ripen the decrees of Fate, Some God would light us, like the rising day, Thro' error's maze, and chase these clouds away. Long since has Time fulfill'd this great decree, And brought us aid from this divinity.

Well worth our search discoveries may be made By Nature, void of the caelestial aid: Let's try what her conjectures then can reach, Nor scorn plain Reason, when she deigns to teach.

That mind and body often sympathize Is plain; such is this union Nature ties: But then as often too they disagree, Which proves the soul's superior progeny. Sometimes the body in full strength we find, Whilst various ails debilitate the mind; At others, whilst the mind its force retains, The body sinks with sickness and with pains: Now did one common fate their beings end, Alike they'd sicken, and alike they'd mend. But sure experience, on the slightest view, Shews us, that the reverse of this is true; For when the body oft expiring lies, Its limbs quite senseless, and half clos'd its eyes, The mind new force, and eloquence acquires, And with prophetic voice the dying lips inspires.

Of like materials were they both compos'd, How comes it, that the mind, when sleep has clos'd Each avenue of sense, expatiates wide Her liberty restor'd, her bonds unty'd? And like some bird who from its prison flies, Claps her exulting wings, and mounts the skies.

Grant that corporeal is the human mind, In must have parts in infinitum join'd; And each of these must will, perceive, design, And draw confus'dly in a diff'rent line; Which then can claim dominion o'er the rest, Or stamp the ruling passion in the breast?

Perhaps the mind is form'd by various arts Of modelling, and figuring these parts; Just as if circles wiser were than squares; But surely common sense aloud declares That site, and figure are as foreign quite From mental pow'rs, as colours black or white.

Allow that motion is the cause of thought, With what strange pow'rs must motion then be fraught? Reason, sense, science, must derive their source From the wheel's rapid whirl, or pully's force; Tops whip'd by school-boys sages must commence, Their hoops, like them, be cudgell'd into sense, And boiling pots o'erflow with eloqeunce. Whence can this very motion take its birth? Not sure from matter, from dull clods of earth; But from a living spirit lodg'd within, Which governs all the bodily machine: Just as th' Almighty Universal Soul Informs, directs, and animals the whole.

Cease then to wonder how th' immortal mind Can live, when from the body quite disjoin'd; But rather wonder, if she e'er cou'd die, So fram'd, so fashion'd for eternity; Self-mov'd, not form'd of parts together ty'd, Which time can dissipate, and force divide; For beings of this make can never die, Whose pow'rs within themselves, and their own essence lie.

If to conceive how any thing can be From shape abstracted and locality Is hard; what think you of the Deity? His Being not the least relation bears, As far as to the human mind appears, To shape, or size, similitude or place, Cloath'd in no form, and bounded by no space. Such then is God, a Spirit pure refin'd From all material dross, and such the human mind. For in what part of essence can we see More certain marks of Immortality? Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight She looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam From this dull earth, and seek her native home.

Go then forgetful of its toil and strife, Pursue the joys of this fallacious life; Like some poor fly, who lives but for a day Sip the fresh dews, and in the sunshine play, And into nothing then dissolve away. Are these our great pursuits, is this to live? These all the hopes this much-lov'd world can give! How much more worthy envy is their fate, Who search for truth in a superior state? Not groping step by step, as we pursue, And following reason's much entangled clue, But with one great, and instantaneous view.

But how can sense remain, perhaps you'll say, Corporeal organs if we take away! Since it from them proceeds, and with them must decay. Why not? or why may not the soul receive New organs, since ev'n art can these retrieve? The silver trumpet aids th' obstructed ear, And optic glasses the dim eye can clear; These in mankind new faculties create, And lift him far above his native state; Call down revolving planets from the sky, Earth's secret treasures open to his eye, The whole minute creation make his own, With all the wonders of a world unknown.

How cou'd the mind, did she alone depend On sense, the errors of those senses mend? Yet oft, we see those senses she corrects, And oft their information quite rejects. In distances of things, their shapes and size, Our reason judges better than our eyes. Declares not this the soul's preheminence Superior to, and quite distinct from sense? For sure 'tis likely, that, since now so high Clog'd and unfledg'd she dares her wings to try, Loos'd, and mature, she shall her strength display, And soar at length to Truth's refulgent ray.

Inquire you how these pow'rs we shall attain, 'Tis not for us to know; our search is vain: Can any now remember or relate How he existed in the embryo state? Or one from birth insensible of day Conceive ideas of the solar ray? That light's deny'd to him, which others see, He knows, perhaps you'll say,—and so do we.

The mind contemplative finds nothing here On earth, that's worthy of a wish or fear: He, whose sublime pursuit is God and truth, Burns, like some absent and impatient youth, To join the object of his warm desires, Thence to sequester'd shades, and streams retires, And there delights his passion to rehearse In wisdom's sacred voice, or in harmonious verse.

To me most happy therefore he appears, Who having once, unmov'd by hopes or fears, Survey'd this sun, earth, ocean, clouds, and flame, Well satisfy'd returns from whence he came. Is life a hundred years, or e'er so few, 'Tis repetition all, and nothing new: A sair, where thousands meet, but none can stay, An inn, where travellers bait, then post away; A sea, where man perpetually is tost, Now plung'd in bus'ness, now in trifles lost: Who leave it first, the peaceful port first gain; Hold then! no farther launch into the main: Contract your sails; lise nothing can bestow By long continuance, but continu'd woe: The wretched privilege daily to deplore The funerals of our friends, who go before: Diseases, pains, anxieties, and cares, And age surrounded with a thousand snares.

But whither hurry'd by a generous scorn Of this vain world, ah, whither am I borne? Let's not unbid th' Almighty's standard quit, Howe'er severe our post, we must submit.

Cou'd I a firm persuasion once attain That after death no being wou'd remain; To those dark shades I'd willingly descend, Where all must sleep, this drama at an end: Nor life accept, altho' renew'd by Fate Ev'n from its earliest, and its happiest state.

Might I from Fortune's bounteous hand receive Each boon, each blessing in her pow'r to give, Genius, and science, morals, and good-sense, Unenvy'd honors, wit and eloquence, A numerous offspring to the world well known Both for paternal virtues, and their own; Ev'n at this mighty price I'd not be bound To tread the same dull circle round, and round; The soul requires enjoyments more sublime, By space unbounded, undestroy'd by time.