"Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

results from thence no discord or disorder in the creation; on the
contrary, from the mixture, union, and contrast of all the various
powers of inanimate bodies and living creatures, arises that
sympathy, harmony, {7} and proportion, which affords the surest
argument of supreme wisdom. The providence of the Deity appears not
immediately in any operation, but governs every thing by those
general and immutable laws, which have been established from the
beginning of time. All events, in one sense, may be pronounced the
action of the Almighty, they all proceed from those powers with
which he has endowed his creatures. A house which falls by its own
weight, is not brought to ruin by his providence, more than one
destroyed by the hands of men; nor are the human faculties less his
workmanship, than the laws of motion and gravitation. When the
passions play, when the judgment dictates, when the limbs obey; this
is all the operation of God, and upon these animate principles, as
well as upon the inanimate, has he established the government of the
universe. Every event is alike important in the eyes of that
infinite being, who takes in at one glance the most distant regions
of space, and {8} remotest periods of time. There is no event,
however important to us, which he has exempted from the general laws
that govern the universe, or which he has peculiarly reserved for
his own immediate action and operation. The revolution of states and
empires depends upon the smallest caprice or passion of single men;
and the lives of men are shortened or extended by the smallest
accident of air or dies, sunshine or tempest. Nature still continues
her progress and operation; and if general laws be ever broke by
particular volitions of the Deity, 'tis after a manner which
entirely escapes human observation. As on the one hand, the elements
and other inanimate parts of the creation carry on their action
without regard to the particular interest and situation of men; so
men are entrusted to their own judgment and discretion in the
various shocks of matter, and may employ every faculty with which
they are endowed, in order to provide for their ease, happiness, or
{9} preservation. What is the meaning then of that principle, that a
man who tired of life, and hunted by pain and misery, bravely
overcomes all the natural terrors of death, and makes his escape
from this cruel scene: that such a man I say, has incurred the
indignation of his Creator by encroaching on the office of divine
providence, and disturbing the order of the universe? Shall we
assert that the Almighty has reserved to himself in any peculiar
manner the disposal of the lives of men, and has not submitted that
event, in common with others, to the general laws by which the
universe is governed? This is plainly false; the lives of men depend
upon the same laws as the lives of all other animals; and these are
subjected to the general laws of matter and motion. The fall of a
tower, or the infusion of a poison, will destroy a man equally with
the meanest creature; an inundation sweeps away every thing without
distinction that comes within the reach of its fury. Since therefore
the lives of men {10} are for ever dependant on the general laws of
matter and motion, is a man's disposing of his life criminal,