ment of time. Unfold to him some of the discoveries which have been made in relation to the constitution of the atmosphere, the electric, magnetic, and galvanic fluids, and the chymical changes and operations that are constantly going on in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and his curiosity will be strongly excited to penetrate still farther into the inysteries of nature. Direct his views to the concave of the firmament, and tell him of the vast magnitude of the sun, and the planetary globes, the amazing velocity with which they run their destined rounds, and of the immense number and distances of the stars-and he will eagerly pant after more minute information respecting the great bodies of the universe, and feel delighted at hearing of new discoveries being made in the unexplored regions of creation.

I never knew an instance in which knowledge of this description was communicated in a rational, distinct, and alluring manner, where it was not received with a certain degree of pleasure, and with an ardent desire to make further investigations into the wonders of creating wisdom and power. Such appears to be the original constitution of the human mind, that it is necessarily gratified with every thing that gives scope to the exercise of its faculties, and which has a tendency to extend the range of their action. It is true, indeed, that, in some men, the desire of knowledge appears to be blunted and almost annihilated, so that they appear to be little superior in their views to the lower orders of sensitive existence. But this happens only in those cases where the intellectual faculties are benumbed and stupified by indolence and sensuality. Such persons do all they can to counteract the original propensities of their nature; and yet even in the worst cases of this kind that can occur, the original desire is never altogether extirpated, so long as the senses are qualified to perform their functions. For the most brutish man is never found entirely divested of the principle of curiosity, when any striking or extraordinary object is presented to his view. On such an occasion, the original principles of his constitution will be roused into action, and he will feel a certain de gree of wonder and delight in common with other rational minds.

And, as man has a natural desire after knowledge, and a delight in it-so, he is furnished with noble faculties and vast capacities of intellect for enabling him to acquire, and to treasure it up. He is furnished with senses calculated to convey ideas of the forms. qualities, and relations of the various objects which surround him. His sense of vision, in particular, appears to take in a wider range of objects, than that of any other sensitive being. While some of the lower animals have their vision circumscribed within a circie of a few yards or inches in diameter, the eye of man can survey, at one glance, an exten

sive landscape, and penetrate even to the regions of distant worlds. To this sense we are indebted for our knowledge of the sublimest objects which can occupy the mind, and for the ideas we have acquired of the boundless range of creation. And, while it is fitted to trace the motions of mighty worlds, which roll at the distance of a thousand millions of miles, it is also so constructed, as to enable him, with the assistance of art, to survey the myriads of living beings which people a drop of water. All his other senses are likewise calculated to extend the range of his knowledge, to enable him to communicate his ideas to others, and to facilitate the mutual interchanges of thought and sentiment between rational minds of a similar construction with his

own.

His understanding is capable of taking in a vast variety of sentiments and ideas in relation to the immense multiplicity of objects which are perceived by his external senses. Hence the various sciences he has cultivated, the sublime discoveries he has made, and the noble inventions he has brought to light. By the powers of his understanding, he has surveyed the terraqueous globe, in all its varieties of land and water, continents, islands and oceans; determined its magnitude, its weight, its figure and motions; explored i's interior recesses, descended into the bottom of its seas, arranged and classified the infinite variety of vegetables, minerals, and animals which it contains, analysed the invisible atmosphere with which it is surrounded, and determined the elementary principles of which it is composed, discovered the nature of thunder, and arrested the rapid lightnings in their course, ascertained the laws by which the planets are directed in their courses, weighed the masses of distant worlds, determined their size and distances, and explored regions of the universe invisible to the unassisted eye, whose distance exceeds all human calculation and comprehension. The sublime sciences of Geometry, Trigonometry, Conic Sections, Fluxions, Algebra, and other branches of Mathematics, evince the acuteness and perspicacity of his intellect; and their application to the purposes of Navigation and Geography, and to the determination of the laws of the celestial motions, the periods of their revolutions, their eclipses, and the distances at which they are placed from our sublunary mansion, demonstrate the vigour and comprehension of those reasoning faculties with which he is endowed.

By means of the instruments and contrivances which his inventive faculty has enabled him to form and construct, he can transport ponderous masses across the ocean, determine the exact position in which he is at any time placed upon its surface, direct his course along pathless deserts and through the billows of the mighty deep; -transform a portion of steam into a mechanical

Dower for impelling waggons along roads, and arge vessels with great velocity against wind and tide; and can even transport himself through the yielding air beyond the region of the clouds. He can explore the invisible worlds which are contained in a putrid lake, and bring to view their numerous and diversified inhabitants; and the next moment he can penetrate to regions of the universe immeasurably distant, and contemplate the mountains and the vales, the rocks and the plains which diversify the scenery of distant surrounding worlds. He can extract an invisible substance from a piece of coal, by which he can produce, almost in a moment, the most splendid illumination throughout every part of a large and populous city, he can detach the element of fire from the invisible air, and cause the hardest stones, and the heaviest metals to melt like wax under its powerful agency; and he can direct the lightnings of heaven to accomplish his purposes, in splitting immense stones into a multitude of fragments. He can cause a splendid city, adorned with lofty columns, palaces, and temples, to arise, in a spot where nothing was formerly beheld but a vast desert or a putrid marsh; and can make the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to bud and blossom as the rose." He can communicate his thoughts and sentiments in a few hours, to ten hundred thousands of his fellow-men; in a few weeks, to the whole civilized world; and, after his decease, he can diffuse important instructions among mankind, throughout succeeding generations. In short, he can look back, and trace the most memorable events which have happened in the world since time began; he can survey the present aspect of the moral world among all na ions;-he can penetrate beyond the limits of all that is visible in the immense canopy of heaven, and range amidst the infinity of unknown systems and worlds dispersed throughout the boundless regions of creation, and he can overleap the bounds of time, and expatiate amidst future scenes of beauty and sublimity, which " hath not seen," throughout the countless ages of eternity.

eye

What an immense multitude of ideas, in relation to such subjects, must the mind of such a person as Lord Bacon have contained! whose mental eye surveyed the whole circle of human science, and who pointed out the path by which every branch of knowledge may be carried towards perfection! How sublime and diversified must have been the range of thought pursued by the immortal Newton! whose capacious intellect seemed to grasp the vast system of universal nature, who weighed the ponderous masses of the planetary globes, and unfolded the laws by which their diversified phenomena are produced, and their motions directed!

"Be, while on this dim spot, where mortals toil, Cloided in dust,-from Motion's simple laws

Could trace the secret hand of Providence,
Wide-working through this universal frame.
-All intellectual eye, our solar round
First gazing through, he, by the blei ded power
Of Gravitation and Projection, saw
The whole in silent harmony revolve
Then breaking hence, he took his ardent flight
Through the blue infinite, and every star
Which the clear concave of a winter's night
Pours on the eye, or astronomic tube,-
at his approach

Blazed into suns, the living centre each
Of an harmonious system."

Such minds as those of Socrates, Plato, Archimedes, Locke, Boyle, La Place, and similar illustrious characters, likewise demonstrate the vast capacity of the 'human intellect, the extensive range of thought it is capable of prosecuting, and the immense number of ideas it is capable of acquiring. And every man, whose faculties are in a sound state, is endowed with similar powers of thought, and is capable of being trained to similar degrees of intellectual excellence.

And as man is endued with capacious intellectual powers for the acquisition of knowledge, so he is furnished with a noble faculty by which he is enabled to retain, and to treasure up in his intellect the knowledge he acquires. He is endowed with the faculty of memory, by which the mind retains the ideas of past objects and perceptions, accompanied with a persuasion, that the objects or things remembered were formerly real and present.

Without with faculty we could never advance a single step in the path of mental improvement. If the information we originally derive through the medium of the senses were to vanish the moment the objects are removed from our immediate perception, we should be left as devoid of knowledge as if we had never existed. But, by the power of memory, we can treasure up, as in a storehouse, the greater part, if not the whole of the ideas, notions, reasonings, and perceptions which we formerly acquired, and render them subservient to our future progress in intellectual attainments. And it is probable, that even a human spirit. in the vigorous exercise of the faculties with which it is now furnished, may go forward, through an interminable duration, making continual accessions to its stores of knowledge, without losing one leading idea, or portion of information which it had previously acquired.

The power of memory in retaining past impressions, and its susceptibility of improvement, are vastly greater than is generally imagined. In many individuals, both in ancient and in modern times, it has been found in such a state of perfection, as to excite astonishment, and almost to transcend belief. It is reported of Seneca, that he could repeat two thousand verses at once, in their order, and then begin at the end and rehearse them backwards, without missing a single syllable. Cyrus is said to have been able to call every individual of his numerous army by

is own name. Cyneas, who was sent by Pyrrhus to the Senate at Rome, on an expedition, the very next day af er his arrival, both knew and also saluted by their names, all the Senate, and the whole order of the gentlemen in Rome. Mithridates, who governed twentythree nations, all of different languages, could converse with every one of them in their own language. An ancient author mentions one Oritus, a Corsican boy, to whom he diciated a great number of words both sense and nonsense, and finding he could rehearse a considerable number without missing one, and in the same order in which he dictated them, increased them to the number of forty thousand, and found, to his astonishment, that he could repeat them all from beginning to end, or from the end backwards to the beginning, in the order in which they were dictated.

In modern times, there have likewise been many instances of extraordinary powers of retention. D. Wallis, in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, informs us that he extracted the cube root of the number three, even to thirty places of decimals, by the help of his memory alone. Maglia Bethi, an Italian, had read all the books that were published in his life time, and most of those which were published before, and could not only give an account of what was contained in each author, but could likewise, from memory, quote the chapter, section, and page of any book he had read, and repeat the author's own words, in reference to any particular topic. A gentleman, in order to try his memory, lent him a long manuscript he was about to publish, and after it had been returned, called upon him soon afterwards, pretending he had lost it, and desired him to write as much of it as he could remember; when, to his surprise, he wrote it over accurately word for word, the same as in the manuscript he had lent him. M. Euler, a late celebrated mathematician and philosopher, who died in 1783, having lost his sight by too intense application to study, afterwards composed his "Elements of Algebra," and a work "On the inequalities of the planetary motions," that required immense and complicated calculations, which he performed by his memory alone, to the admiration and astonishment even of the philosophic

world.

His memory seemed to retain every idea that was conveyed to it, either from reading or from meditation, and his powers of reasoning und of discrimination were equally acute and capacious. He was also an excellent classical scholar, and could repeat the neid of Virgil from the beginning to the end, and indicate the first and last line of every page of the edition he used. I have conversed with an individual,

Senec Controvers. Lib. 1. Pliny's Nat. Hist. &c. ↑ Encyclopedia Britan. Art. Euler.

who was born blind, and who could repeat the whole of the Old and New Testaments from beginning to end; and not only so, but could repeat any particular chapter or verse that might be proposed to him, the moment after it was specified.

Thus it appears that man is not only possessed of an ardent desire after knowledge, but is endued with the most penetrating and capacious powers of intellect, both for acquir.ng and for treasuring it up in his mind-powers which appear susceptible of indefinite improvement in this world; and the legitimate inference that may be drawn from this, is, that they will continue to be exerted with uninterrupted activity, throughout an unceasing duration. And, is it possible to suppose, in consistency with the moral attributes of the Deity, that the exercise of such powers is intended to be confined within the narrow limits of time, and to the contracted sphere of the terraqueous globe?

"Say, can a soul possess'd

Of such extensive, deep, tremendous powers
Enlarging still, be but a finer breath
Of spirits dancing through their tubes a while,
And then for ever lost in vacant air?"

Such a conclusion never can be admitted while we recognise the divinity as possessed of boundless goodness and unerring wisdom. It is the province of goodness to gratify those pure and ardent desires which it has implanted in the soul; and it is the part of wisdom to proportionate means to ends. But if the whole existence of human beings had been intended to be confined to a mere point in duration, is it rational to suppose, that Infinite Wisdoni would have endowed the human soul with powers and capaci ties so marvellous and sublime, and made so many great preparations and arrangements for promoting its physical and moral perfection? To acquiesce in such a supposition, would be to degrade the divine wisdom and intelligence below the level of the wisdom of man, and to impute imperfection and folly o Him who is "the only wise God." For, in the conduct of human beings, we uniformly regard it as an evidence of folly, when they construct a complicated and an extravagant machine, which either accomplishes no end, or no end worthy of the expense and labour bestowed on its construction. And, therefore, if we would not ascribe imbecility or want of design to the adorable Creator of the universe, we must admit, that he has not formed the soul of man for this terrestrial scene alone, but has destined it to a state of progressive improvement, and of endless duration.

This conclusion will appear still more evident, if we consider the endless round of business and care, and the numerous hardships to which the bulk of mankind are subjected in the present state, which prevent the full and vigorous exer

cise of the intellectual powers on those objects which are congenial to the ardent desires, and the noble faculties of the human soul. The greater part of mankind, in the present circumstances of their terrestrial existence, have their time and attention almost wholly absorbed in counteracting the evils incident to their present condition, and in making provision for the wants of their animal natures; and, consequently, the full gratification of the appetite for knowledge, is an absolute impossibility, amidst the pursuits and the turmoils connected with the present scene of things. If we likewise consider the difficulty of directing the mind in the pursuit of substantial knowledge, and the numerous obstructions which occur in our researches after truth, amidst the contradictory opinions, the jarring interests, and the wayward passions of men,-if we consider the imperfections of our senses, and the fallacies to which they are exposed-the prejudices and the passions which seduce us into error-how readily we embrace a glittering phantom for a substantial truth-and how soon our spirits faint under the pressure of intense application to mental pursuits,-we shall be convinced, that, in this sublunary sphere, there is no scope for the full exercise of the intellectual powers, and that the present world must be only a preparatory scene to a higher state of existence. Besides, even in those cases where every requisite for the acquisition of knowledge is possessed-where ieisure, wealth. education, books, instruments, and all the assistances derived from learned associations, are conjoined with the most splendid intellectual endowments, how feeble are the efforts of the most penetrating and energetic mind, and how narrow the boundary within which its views are confined! The brightest genius, standing on the highest eminence to which science can transport him, contemplates a boundless prospect of objects and events, the knowledge of which he can never hope to attain, while he is chained down to the limits of this terrestrial

ball. His mental eye beholds an unbounded and diversified scene of objects, operations, relations, changes, and revolutions, beyond the limits of all that is visible to the eye of sense: he catches an occasional glimpse of objects and of scenes which were previously involved in obscurity, he strains his mental sight, stretches forward with eagerness to grasp at new discoveries, descries some openings which direct his view into the regions of infinity and eternity-is still restless and unsatisfied-perceives all his knowledge to be mere shreds and patches, or like a few dim tapers amidst the surrounding gloom-is convinced that his present faculties are too weak and limited, and that he must be raised to a sublimer station, before he can fully grasp the magnificent objects which lie hid in the unexplored regions of immensity. All his present views and prospects are conûned within a circle of a few miles, and

all beyond, in the universal system, which e tends through the immeasurable tracts of infinite space, is darkness and uncertainty.

Can it, then, be supposed, that a soul furnished with such noble powers and capacities, capable of traversing the realm of creation, of opening new prospects into the unbounded regions of truth that lie before it, and of appreciating the perfections of the Sovereign of the universe-a soul fired with ardent desires after knowledge, panting after new discoveries of truth and of the grandeur of the Divinity, unsatisfied with all its past attainments, and contemplating a boundless unexplored prospect before it should be cast off from existence, and sink into eternal annihilation, at the moment when its capacities were just beginning to expand, when its desires were most ardent, and when the scenes of immensity and eternity were just opening to its view? If such a supposition could be admitted, man would be the most inexplicable phenomenon in the universe; his existence an unfathomable mystery; and there could be no conceivable mode of reconciling his condition and destination with the wis dom, the rectitude, and the benevolence of his Creator.*

SECTION IV.

ON THE PERPETUAL PROGRESS OF THE MIND TOWARDS PERFECTION.

As a supplement to the preceding argument, it may be stated, that the soul of man appears to intellectual and moral perfection, and of enjoying be capable of making a perpetual progress towards felicity in every stage of its career, without the possibility of ever arriving at a boundary to its excursions. In the present state we perceive no limits to the excursions of the intellect, but those which arise from its connexion with an

unwieldy corporal frame, which is chained down, as it were, to a mere point, in the immensity of creation. Up to the latest period of its connexion with time, it is capable of acquiring new accessions of knowledge, higher attainments in virtue, and more ardent desires after

Such considerations, as those which I have now adduced, seem to have made a powerful impression upon the minds of the philosophers of antiquity. "When I consider," says Cicero, "the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future; when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising; I believe, and am firmly persuaded, that a nature which contains so many things within itselt cannot be mortal." Cicero de Senectute. Cap. 21 And if this argument appeared strong even in Cice ro's time, it has received a vast accession of strength from the numerous arts, sciences, inventions, and discoveries, which are peculiar to the age in which we live.