"David Hume - Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

with which alone we are acquainted. Whence do we infer the existence
of these attributes? -- 'Tis very safe for us to affirm, that
whatever we know the Deity to have actually done, is best; but 'tis
very dangerous to affirm, that he must always do {27} what to us
seems best. In how many instances would this reasoning fail us with
regard to the present world? -- But if any purpose of nature be
clear, we may affirm, that the whole scope and intention of man's
creation, so far as we can judge by natural reason, is limited to
the present life. With how weak a concern from the original inherent
structure of the mind and passions, does he ever look farther? What
comparison either for steadiness or efficacy, betwixt so floating an
idea, and the most doubtful persuasion of any matter of fact that
occurs in common life. There arise indeed in some minds some
unaccountable terrors with regard to futurity; but these would
quickly vanish were they not artificially fostered by precept and
education. And those who foster them, what is their motive? Only to
gain a livelihood, and to acquire power and riches in this world.
Their very zeal and industry therefore is an argument against them.
{28}

W/HAT\ cruelty, what iniquity, what injustice in nature, to
confine all our concern, as well as all our knowledge, to the
present life, if there be another scene still waiting us, of
infinitely greater consequence? Ought this barbarous deceit to be
ascribed to a beneficent and wise being? -- Observe with what exact
proportion the task to be performed and the performing powers are
adjusted throughout all nature. If the reason of man gives him great
superiority above other animals, his necessities are proportionably
multiplied upon him; his whole time, his whole capacity, activity,
courage, and passion, find sufficient employment in fencing against
the miseries of his present condition, and frequently, nay almost
always are too slender for the business assigned them. -- A pair of
shoes perhaps was never yet wrought to the highest degree of
perfection which that commodity is capable of attaining. Yet it is
necessary, at least very useful, that there should be some
politicians and moralists, {29} even some geometers, poets, and
philosophers among mankind. The powers of men are no more superior
to their wants, considered merely in this life, than those of foxes
and hares are, compared to wants and to their period of
existence. The inference from parity of reason is therefore obvious.
--

O/N\ the theory of the Soul's mortality, the inferiority of
women's capacity is easily accounted for. Their domestic life
requires no higher faculties, either of mind or body. This
circumstance vanishes and becomes absolutely insignificant, on the
religious theory: the one sex has an equal task to perform as the
other; their powers of reason and resolution ought also to have been
equal, and both of them infinitely greater than at present. As every
effect implies a cause, and that another, till we reach the first

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