Human nature and conscience

Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit primary

In commentary, Coleridge explains that disproportion between moral worth and worldly fortune leads thoughtful people to infer something essentially different in humans, culminating in an argument for immortality.

COMMENT. A fact may be truly stated, and yet the Cause or Reason assigned for it mistaken; or inadequate; or *pars pro toto*--one only or few of many that might or should have been adduced. The preceding Aphorism is an instance in point. The phenomenon here brought forward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion of men's belief of a future state--viz. the frequent, not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral …