🚀 go-pugleaf

put them under the
dreadful necessity of being either annihilated or unhappy for ever, without
knowing which of these eternities is for ever prepared for them.

This is a doubt of terrible consequence. They are in peril of eternal woe
and thereupon, as if the matter were not worth the trouble, they neglect to
inquire whether this is one of those opinions which people receive with too
credulous a facility, or one of those which, obscure in themselves, have a
very firm, though hidden, foundation. Thus they know not whether there be
truth or falsity in the matter, nor whether there be strength or weakness in
the proofs. They have them before their eyes; they refuse to look at them;
and in that ignorance they choose all that is necessary to fall into this
misfortune if it exists, to await death to make trial of it, yet to be very
content in this state, to make profession of it, and indeed to boast of it.
Can we think seriously of the importance of this subject without being
horrified at conduct so extravagant?

This resting in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who pass their life
in it must be made to feel its extravagance and stupidity, by having it
shown to them, so that they may be confounded by the sight of their folly.
For this is how men reason, when they choose to live in such ignorance of
what they are and without seeking enlightenment. "I know not," they say...

196. Men lack heart; they would not make a friend of it.

197. To be insensible to the extent of despising interesting things, and to
become insensible to the point which interests us most.

198. The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great
things, indicates a strange inversion.

199. Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death,
where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who
remain see their own fate in that of their fellows an