The following Question is started by one of the Schoolmen.  Supposing the whole Body of the Earth were a great Ball or Mass of the finest Sand, and that a single Grain or Particle of this Sand should be annihilated every thousand Years.  Supposing then that you had it in your Choice to be happy all the while this prodigious Mass of Sand was consuming by this slow Method till there was not a Grain of it left, on Condition you were to be miserable for ever after; or, supposing that you might be happy for ever after, on Condition you would be miserable till the whole Mass of Sand were thus annihilated at the Rate of one Sand in a thousand Years:  Which of these two Cases would you make your Choice?

It must be confessed in this Case, so many Thousands of Years are to the Imagination as a kind of eternity, tho’ in reality they do not bear so great a Proportion to that Duration which is to follow them, as a Unite does to the greatest Number which you can put together in Figures, or as one of those Sands to the supposed Heap.  Reason therefore tells us, without any Manner of Hesitation, which would be the better Part in this Choice.  However, as I have before intimated, our Reason might in such a Case be so overset by the Imagination, as to dispose some Persons to sink under the Consideration of the great Length of the first Part of this Duration, and of the great Distance of that second Duration which is to succeed it.  The Mind, I say, might give it self up to that Happiness which is at Hand, considering that it is so very near, and that it would last so very long.  But when the Choice we actually have before us is this, Whether we will chuse to be happy for the space of only three-score and ten, nay perhaps of only twenty or ten Years, I might say of only a Day or an Hour, and miserable to all Eternity; or, on the contrary, miserable for this short Term of Years, and happy for a whole Eternity:  What Words are sufficient to express that Folly and want of Consideration which in such a Case makes a wrong Choice?

I here put the Case even at the worst, by supposing (what seldom happens) that a Course of Virtue makes us miserable in this Life:  But if we suppose (as it generally happens) that Virtue would make us more happy even in this Life than a contrary Course of Vice; how can we sufficiently admire the Stupidity or Madness of those Persons who are capable of making so absurd a Choice?

Every wise Man therefore will consider this Life only as it may conduce to the Happiness of the other, and chearfully sacrifice the Pleasures of a few Years to those of an Eternity.

* * * * *

No. 576.  Wednesday, August 4, 1714.  Addison.

  ’Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui coetera, vincit
  Impetus; et rapido contrarius euchor Orbi.’

  Ovid.