Man in his present state, feels occasional aspirations towards another, prompted by the craving want of some unknown unimaginable good, of which he has no intimation but from the consciousness of an unsatisfied capacity:--Let him not then too easily reject the belief that this capacity has a corresponding object, that his nature is capable of a nobler manifestation, a higher flight in more exalted regions than this, and enlarged as to every power of action, thought, and enjoyment.
Lady Mary Shepherd, Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, p. 159 (in the chapter on the "Difference Between Body and Mind").
This paragraph occurs shortly after her comment, "I confess I think the further we extend our views into the regions of metaphysics, the more possible and probable does the resurrection from the dead appear; or at least an existence analogous to it" (p. 157). It is clear from Shepherd's essay on the eternity of the mind that she doesn't think immortality of the soul or resurrection from the dead is demonstrable; she simply argues that philosophically it is possible and that there are philosophical arguments that give it some probability. She then goes on to say what she hopes will be the case:
As for myself, though I think that, independant of the inference from scripture, the reunion of memory to future consciousness presents no philosophical difficulty, yet I could be well content in the trust that, the inquiry for truth should be rewarded by the finding it, whether the present labour in its search be remembered or not; that the charity which sympathizes in witnessing pain, should be enlarged only to promote or to delight in the perception of pleasure, whether former misery be obliterated from the fancy, or not;--that an instinctive devotion towards God should meet with higher demonstrations of his presence than our faint conceptions here are able to embrace, though the satisfaction arising from the comparison should then be denied; and that the conflict here with doubt, difficulty, suffering, temptation, and the observation of evil, should terminate as well as the memory of it, in the personal consciousness, and the notice of surrounding happiness; in a secure and perptual possession of truth; in the love and the enjoyment of the practice of every noble and kindly virtue.
Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, "Eternity of Mind," pp. 384-385.
