From a review of “Physical Theory of Another Life.”

IF Scipio had his dream of colloquies after death with the wise and good of all ages, the Eskimo has his heaven where sealskins may be procured in placid seas, and undying lamps are fed with inexhaustible supplies of the odorous grease of bears. Mahomet promised his Arabian converts “rivers of incorruptible water and rivers of milk, the taste whereof changeth not; gardens planted with shady trees, in each of which shall be two flowing fountains; couches, the linings whereof shall be of thick silk interwoven with gold, and beautous damsels, refraining their eyes from beholding any but their spouses, having complexions like rubies and pearls, and fine black-eyes.” The stream can rise no higher than the fountain. Our ideas of immortal good are but amplifications of our mortal enjoyments. To sublimate our conceptions of felicity, by associating together all innocent and not incompatible delights, and by subtracting from them every alloy of pain, satiety, and languor, is to create for ourselves the only heaven with the contemplation of which hope can be sustained and activity invigorated. He who carefully surveys the Elysium which reason or imagination has laid out and planted for him in the next world will acquire far better acquaintance with the “happy gardens” to which choice or fortune has directed him in this. Judged by this standard, and giving him credit for having made his public confessions with entire candor, the author of the “Theory of a Future Life” may be esteemed a wise and happy man—wise, because he has no fear of acknowledging to himself or to others the dependence of his spiritual on his animal economy, and affects no superhuman disdain of mere bodily gratifications; and happy, because his felicity consists in bringing the body into that unresisting servitude to the mind, without which freedom and serenity are but empty words. Such as is his paradise in the highest conceivable degree, such in the highest attainable degree must be his earthly Eden. Dismiss it if you will as a midsummer night’s dream; yet must it be confessed that it is such a dream as could visit no slumbers but those of one whose fancy was pure from sensual defilement, and whose intellect had been trained to active exercise and to close self-observation. Or, give the theorist credit for nothing more than having skillfully selected the most alluring possibilities of future good from the many celestial schemes with which the poetry and the poetical prose of all ages abounds, and still it will be true that the choice has been guided by opinions such as every one would wish to adopt, and by tastes which in our better moments we should all desire to gratify. The time subtracted, for such visions, from the scarcely more substantial delights among which we are living, will send us back to the cares of life, not less fitted resolutely to endure them; and to the pleasures of life, not less prepared wisely to enjoy them….

  There is in Christianity an expansive power, sometimes repressed, but never destroyed; and that latent energy the Christian strives to draw forth into life and action. Those mysteries which shroud the condition and the prospects of our race, however inscrutable to the slaves of appetite, are not absolutely impervious to a soul purified by devout contemplation; and to these empyreal heights he aspires at once to point and to lead the way. To him whose foot is firmly planted on the eternal verities of heaven, there belong motives of such force, and a courage so undaunted, as should burst through all resistance; and he calls on those who enjoy this high privilege to assert their native supremacy above the sordid ambition, the frivolities, and the virulence of the lower world. The voice thus raised in expostulation will die away, not unheeded by the interior circle he addresses, nor unblessed by a meet recompense; but unrewarded, we fear, by the accomplishment of these exalted purposes. Eloquent as is the indignation with which our anonymous monitor regards the low level to which divine and human literature has fallen amongst us, and mean as is his estimate of the pursuits with which the men of his own days are engaged, a hope may perhaps, without presumption, be indulged, that less fastidious and not less capable judges will pronounce a more lenient sentence on us and on our doings.

  In the great cycle of human affairs there are many stages, each essential to the consummation of the designs of Providence, and each separated by broad distinctions from the rest. They whose province it is to censure, and they whose desire it is to improve their age, will never find their sacred fires extinct from the mere want of fuel. History and theory are always at hand with humiliating contrasts to the times we live in. That men have been better or might be better than they are has been true since the first fathers of our race returned to their native dust, and will still be true as long as our planet shall be inhabited by their descendants. But below the agitated surface of the ocean, under currents are silently urging forward, on their destined path, the waters of the mighty deep, themselves impelled by that Power which none may question or resist. Human society obeys a similar influence. Laws as anomalous in appearance, as uniform in reality, as those which direct the planetary movements, determine the present state, and regulate the progress of commonwealths, whether political, literary, or religious. Christianity demands the belief, and experience justifies the hope, that their ultimate tendency is towards the universal dominion of piety and virtue. But it is neither pious nor rational to suppose that this consummation can be attained by any sequence of identical causes constantly working out similar effects. The best generations, like the best men, are those which possess an individual and distinctive character. A chain of splendid biographies constitutes the history of past centuries. Whoever shall weave the chronicles of our own must take for his staple statistics illuminated by a skillful generalization. Once every eye was directed to the leaders of the world; now all are turned to the masses of which it is composed. Instead of Newtons presiding over royal societies, we have Dr. Birkbecks lecturing at mechanics’ institutes. If no Wolseys arise to found colleges like that of Christ Church, Joseph Lancaster and William Bell have emulated each other in works not less momentus at the Borough Road and Baldwin’s Gardens. We people continents, though we have ceased to discover them. We abridge folios for the many, though we no longer write them for the few….

  We know not how to regret that Genius has from the moment abdicated her austere supremacy, and stooped to be popular and plain. Mackintosh surrendered his philosophy to the compilation of a familiar history of England. Faithless to his Peris and Glendoveers, Mr. Moore is teaching the commonalty of the realm the sad tale of the woes inflicted on the land of his birth. No longer emulous of Porson, the Bishop of London devotes his learned desire to preparing cheap and easy lessons for the householders of his diocese. Lord Brougham arrests the current of his eloquence to instruct mechanics in the principles of the sciences which they are reducing to daily practice. Tracts for the times are extorted from the depositories of ecclesiastical tradition, obedient to the general impulse which they condemn, and constrained to render the Church argumentative, that they may render her oracular. Nay, the author of the “Natural History of Enthusiasm” himself, despite his own protests, yields at length to the current, and has become the periodical writer of monthly tracts, where, in good round controversial terms, the superficial multitude are called to sit in judgment on the claims of the early fathers to sound doctrine, good morals, and common sense. Let who will repine at what has passed, and at what is passing, if they will allow us to rejoice in what is to come. If we witness the growth of no immortal reputations, we see the expansion of universal intelligence. The disparities of human understanding are much the same in all times; but it is when the general level is the highest that the mighty of the earth rise to the most commanding eloquence.