Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

After observing a number of judgments I concluded that the guilt of every action was decided according to the injury which mankind had sustained by it. Thus the pleasures of a man, by which he had not impaired the happiness of others, were not to be found in his sack of faults: but those enjoyments, which, by example or participation, had involved others in misfortune, were declared by the scale to be crimes; and if even without being imparted to others they had corrupted the mind of the criminal, or occupied his time so as to prevent the good actions he would otherwise have performed, they were weighed against him.

At the bottom of each sack containing vices were found the opportunities of virtue, which the criminal had neglected, and which were weighed against him as actual crimes. Thus there were some, who, by the advantage of their situation in life, had done but little harm, and yet their merits were greatly outweighed by these omissions of goodness. Some produced sacks very well stored with merit, who nevertheless were overwhelmed by the multitude of neglected opportunities. Others who found but few good actions in their sack, yet were favourably judged by the scale, because there were no opportunities against them.

The Prophet perceiving it was generally suspected that the angels who had prepared the sacks of vice and virtue had performed their tasks ignorantly, and omitted many acts of goodness, declared, that every person who was dissatisfied with the stock of merits assigned him, might require any absent action of his life to be produced and weighed.

A Saracen approached the scales with great confidence, relying upon the number of men whom he had put to death for not believing in Mahomet; but, to his dismay, these exploits were all found in the criminal bag, and the earth swallowed him while he remonstrated against the ingratitude of the Prophet, who condemned him after such services. A Christian also, who had converted men to his own faith by torture, imprisonment, and other arts of persuasion, found all these religious efforts in the wrong bag. By some other judgments it was soon declared upon what grounds religious merit was to be decided: those who had caused the morality of their religion to be received had merit by it; but there was no credit to those who had only propagated their faith from party zeal; and if they had done it violently the oppressions were as heavy in the scale as other injuries.

I observed the trial of a zealot who had been burned for heresy. He had maintained every article of his creed against the flames, and been turned into ashes without recanting a single tenet. Having now observed that good men of all religions were rewarded, he opened his bag of virtue with confidence, and was astonished that his burning could not be found in it. However, supposing it to have been omitted by mistake, he summoned it into the sack through the permission given by the Prophet, and taking it forth, held it ready to atone for any failing that could depress the adverse scale. A man stepped forth, and claimed compensation of him for an injury. The zealot once endeavoured to convert this man, who was of a different faith from himself, and incensed by his not believing with the despatch which he thought reasonable, he had seized him by the hair, and dashed his head against a wall with so much energy, as to make him fall senseless to the ground, upon which the teacher had left him thus effectually silenced. This outrage was placed in the scale, and weighed it down with some force. The zealot, with a triumphant look, placed his martyrdom in the other scale, but without stirring it. He lost all patience when he discovered the invalidity of his burning, and asked what inducement men would now have to become martyrs. The Prophet condescended to answer, that he forgot the world was now at an end; and if it were not, perhaps it would be quite as prosperous without martyrs. He then tried this martyrdom by his infallible weights, and found it interpreted into "party rage."

I remarked the trial of an author celebrated for some works on moral philosophy. A man whom he had defrauded of a legacy came forward to demand a portion of the philosopher's virtue. The fraud was committed to the scale, and hastily drew it down, when the author took from his bag a treatise on justice, which had been much applauded. I believe this book was not in his bag at first, but summoned there by the permission which the Prophet had given, that all who believed any of their virtues omitted might require them to appear. The author, therefore, tearing out a leaf from his treatise, placed it in the scale as an ample equivalent for the legacy. He was surprised that this just and eloquent leaf had no weight against the fraud, upon which he added another torn from a part of the treatise which evinced the most integrity; but this reinforcement was equally useless. He then resigned the whole dissertation to the scale, but it did not move its adversary from the ground, though loaded only with an oversight about a will, while the treatise contained a strict equity in every transaction of life, and amongst other acts of probity a faithful execution of wills. The author again had recourse to his bag, and produced another work, in which he had equally observed the severest rules of duty; but this in conjunction with the essay on justice had no force against the violated will. He continued with the same result to heap one book upon another, for he had been a man of very voluminous morals, and neglected no kind of virtue in his writings. At length he had come to the end of his productions without any atonement, and the great heap of books hung in the air, outweighed by one little error. He proceeded to expostulate against the indignity to his works; and presenting one of the volumes to Mahomet, entreated him to read only a single page, that he might be convinced what injustice was done, when one trifling error was not allowed to be expiated by his continued probity in writing. The Prophet only pointed to the scale resting on the ground, upon which the author said that unless the scale had read his works he could not accept of it as a competent judge of their integrity. The Prophet, without any answer, opened his bag of vices, of which there was an ample collection, and added them to the scale. The author very mournfully searched his bag of merits, which were few and trivial, for he had been so lavish of virtue in his writings as to have none left for practice. However, he made another appeal on behalf of his works; asked how he could be a malefactor with so many chapters of virtue, and represented the injustice of condemning one who had been a good man in every sentence he had written. He then took up one of his books, and was beginning to read aloud at a passage of very vigorous probity, when the earth opened and he descended reading.

A man approached the scales with a criminal bag of a hopeless size, and a diminutive sack of merits; yet by his confident look he seemed to imagine the little bag qualified to contend with the large one. When the great bag came to its confession it was found exempt from hardly any kind of depravity, and the scale sunk irrevocably under its contents. The criminal, however, opened his small bag without dismay; and having stocked the scale with two or three trifling merits, he drew from the bottom of the bag a death-bed repentance, and placed it in the scale with a look of success, but to his amazement the accumulated vices on the other side were unmoved. He appealed to the Prophet against the decision of the scales, declaring that his repentance had been authentic, and without premeditation, not like the formal remorse of so many, who while they commit a crime design to evade punishment by a fiction at last. He protested that for two days before he died his vices had harassed him with sufficient terror; and his clergyman had exhorted him not to afflict himself any longer, for he had repented quite enough to be forgiven. He said he had done all that a dying man could do, and he did not believe that a more deserving death would be presented at judgment. The Prophet deigned to answer that amendment was the only repentance.

"But," said the man, "I had no time for that."

"You lived fifty-six years," replied Mahomet.

"Yes," said the culprit: "but my repentance did not begin till my last illness."