But let us suppose them both equal; they will yet appear not one
jot superior to the beasts for being unconcerned at the stories of
hell and the legends of the gods, and for not expecting endless
sorrows and everlasting torments hereafter. For it is Epicurus
himself that tells us that, had our surmises about heavenly
phenomena and our foolish apprehensions of death and the pains that
ensue it given us no disquiet, we had not then needed to
contemplate nature for our relief. For neither have the brutes any
weak surmises of the gods or fond opinion about things after death
to disorder themselves with; nor have they as much as imagination
or notion that there is anything in these to be dreaded.
I confess, had they left us the benign providence of God as a
presumption, wise men might then seem, by reason of their good
hopes from thence, to have something towards a pleasurable life
that beasts have not. But now, since they have made it the scope
of all their discourses of God that they may not fear him, but may
be eased of all concern about him, I much question whether those
that never thought at all of him have not this in a more confirmed
degree than they that have learned to think he can do no harm.
For if they were never freed from superstition, they never fell
into it; and if they never laid aside a disturbing conceit of God,
they never took one up. The like may be said as to hell and the
future state. For though neither the Epicurean nor the brute can
hope for any good thence; yet such as have no forethought of death
at all cannot but be less amused and scared with what comes after
it than they that betake themselves to the principle that death is
nothing to us. But something to them it must be, at least so far
as they concern themselves to reason about it and contemplate it;
but the beasts are wholly exempted from thinking of what appertains