§ 6.
The priests having, like the pagans with their Gods and goddesses, invented a heaven, where God and the blessed might dwell; after the same example next they contrived a hell, or subterranean place, to which, they assure us, the spirits of wicked men go down for the purpose of being everlastingly tormented. Now, the word hell, in its original sense, imports no more than a place dark and deep; and the poets invented it as the opposite to the residence of the blessed, which they represented as high and bright. This is the exact signification of the Latin terms inferus and inferi, and the Greek hades; any dark place such as a sepulchre, or whatever was fearful from its depth and obscurity. The whole sprung from the imagination of the poet and the knavery of the priests—the former knowing how to make an impression in this way, on weak, timid, and melancholy minds; and the latter having rather more substantial reasons for continuing the delusion.
Omnis enim per se divum natura necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur,
Semota ab nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe;
Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis
Ipsa suis pollens opibus: nihil indiga nostri,
Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur ira.
Lucretius de Rerum Nat. Book I. v. 57, and following. [↑]