And besides this, the
benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too remote
in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced
to labor exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically.
--Posterity has done nothing for us; and, theorize on it as we may,
practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think
we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.
What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit to ask or to expect a
whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of
others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of
which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal
welfare at no more distant day! Great distance in either time or space
has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead
and gone are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less in
the cases of others. Still, in addition to this there is something so
ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to
render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into
ridicule.
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