Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acti… - William Godwin

The views into which I have been led, as to the effects flowing from the mortality of man to human affairs, and the feelings and sentiments it becomes us to cherish respecting the Illustrious Dead, I apprehend to be reasonable and true. Inestimable benefit will in my opinion flow, from the habit of seeing with the intellectual eye things not visible to the eye of the sense, and our attaining the craft and mystery, by which we may, spiritually, each in his several sphere, ‘Compel the earth and ocean to give up / Their dead alive.’ For just so much time as any one shall spend in reading and meditating on the suggestions of these pages, provided it be done in a serious frame, the project is a reality, and as if it were executed: and I hope most persons who shall be induced to examine these hints, will derive from them a solemnity and composure of spirit, which so far as it operates at all, will be favourable to elevation of mind, to generous action, and to virtue.

Men are apt to grow, in the apostolical phrase, too ‘worldly’: the propensity of our nature, or rather the operation of our state, is to plunge us, the lower orders of the community, in the concerns of the day, and their masters, in the cares of wealth and gain. It is good for us, sometimes to be ‘in the mount.’ Those things are to be cherished, which tend to elevate us above our ordinary sphere, and to abstract us from our common and every-day concerns. The affectionate recollection and admiration of the dead will act gently upon our spirits, and fill us with a composed seriousness, favourable to the best and most honourable contemplations.

The pleasures of self-approbation, together with the right cultivation of all our pleasures, require individual independence. Without independence men cannot become either wise, or useful, or happy.