"In old age, man extinguishes entirely, his fibres become rigid, his nerves lose their elasticity, his senses are obtunded, his sight grows dim, his ears lose their quickness, his ideas become unconnected, his memory fails, his imagination cools,--what, then, becomes of his soul. Alas! it sinks down with the body, it gets benumbed as this loses its feeling, becomes sluggish as this decays in activity; like it, when enfeebled by years, it fulfils its functions with pain; this substance, which is deemed spiritual, which is considered immaterial, which it is endeavored to distinguish from matter, undergoes the same revolutions, experiences the same vicissitudes, submits to the name modifications as does the body itself. In despite of this proof of the materiality of the soul, of its identity with the body so convincing to the unprejudiced, some thinkers have supposed that although the latter is perishable, the former does not perish; that this portion of man enjoys the especial privilege of immortality; that it is exempt from dissolution; free from those changes of form all the beings in nature undergo: in consequence of this, man is persuaded himself that this privileged soul does not die. "It will be asked, perhaps, by what road has man been conducted to form to himself gratuitous ideas of another world. I reply, that it is a truth man has no idea of a future life; they are the ideas of the past and the present, that furnish his imagination with the materials of which he constructs the edifice of the regions of futurity. Hobbes says, 'We believe that, that which is will always be, and that the same causes will have the same effects.' Man in his actual state has two modes of feeling--one, that he approves; another, that he disapproves: thus persuaded that these two modes of feeling must accompany him even beyond his present existence, he placed in the regions of eternity two distinguished abodes; one destined to felicity; the other to misery: the one must contain those who obey the calls of superstition, who believe in its dogmas; the other is a prison, destined to avenge the cause of heaven on all those who shall not faithfully believe the doctrines promulgated by the ministers of a vast variety of superstitions. Has sufficient attention been paid to the fact that results as a necessary consequence from this reasoning; which on examination will be found to have rendered the first place entirely useless, seeing, that by the number and contradiction of these various systems, let man believe whichever he may, let him follow it in the most faithful manner, still he must be ranked as an Infidel, as a rebel to the divinity; because he cannot believe in all; and those from which he dissents, by a consequence of their own creed, condemn him to the prison-house?--Such is the origin of the ideas upon a future life, so diffused among mankind. Everywhere may be seen an Elysium, and a Tartarus, a Paradise