“As to the elevation,” said I, “I confess I prefer the spectacle of Socrates, relying even on feeble arguments rather than sink to this tame acquiescence in a notion so degrading to the Deity, as that man was created for a dog’s life with the tormenting aspiration for something better.  The spectacle of the heathen sage, who, amidst the thick gloom, the ‘palpable obscure,’ which involved this subject, gazed intently into the darkness, and ’longed for the day,’—­who strained every nerve of an insufficient logic, and was willing to take even the whispers of hope for the oracles of truth, rather than part with the prospect of immortality,—­is, to my mind, much more attractive.  As to the originality of the view you just expressed, why, it is merely a resurrection of one of the theories of some of our very ‘spiritual deists’ a century ago.  Collins and Shaftesbury were, in like manner, apprehensive lest an elevated ‘virtue’ should suffer at all from this bribery of a hope of a ‘blessed immortality’; as you may see in the Characteristics.  For my own part, I certainly have my doubts whether virtue will be the less virtuous, or spirituality the less spiritual, for such a doctrine; and I must believe it even on the hypothesis of you spiritual folks; for you generally affirm that the Belief of a Future Life does not really exercise any thing more than an insignificant influence on human nature; the hopes and the fears of that so distant a morrow are too vague to be operative.  Now, if it be so, immortality can be no more a bribe than a menace.”

“Yet,” said Fellowes, “in justice to Mr. Newman, it must not be forgotten, that he thinks that ’a firm belief of immortality must have very energetic force,’ provided it ‘rises out of insight’; it is as ‘an external dogma’ that he thinks it of little efficacy.  He says, you know, that, supposing Paul to have had this insight, ’his light can do us no good, while it is a light outside of us.  If he in any way confused the conclusions of his logic (which is often extremely inconsequent and mistaken) with the perceptions of his divinely illuminated soul, our belief might prove baseless.’  (Soul, pp. 226. 227.) These are his very words.”

“Very well, then; say that Mr. Newman thinks the notions of a future hell of little efficacy; and of a future heaven of as little, except when it rises from ’insight’;—­he confessing that he has not that ‘insight,’ and; from the necessity of the case, not knowing whether any body else has, it being a ‘light outside him.’  If so, I think he is much like the rest of you, and cannot in fact suppose the thought of a future life to operate strongly either as a bribe or a menace.”

“But, surely, whatever his views, or those of any individual, you must admit that a piety which is sustained without any hopes of immortality is less selfish than that which is.”

“Why,” replied I, laughing; “I cannot conceive how the hope of a virtuous immortality can produce a vicious self-love.  But if the hope and the consciousness of happiness now exercise any influence at all, your argument proves too much; and there is a simple impossibility of being unselfishly religious at all.”