kindred element. But all these efforts are like the vain
exertions of the hare in the fable. The slowly moving tortoise,
the body, never fails to overtake the mind, however widely and
extensively it may have ranged, and the brightest and most
energetic intellects, unwillingly as they may attend to the first
or second summons, must ultimately yield the empire of the brain
to the calls of hunger, or sink with the exhausted body in sleep.

It seems as if one might say with certainty that if a
medicine could be found to immortalize the body there would be no
fear of its [not] being accompanied by the immortality of the
mind. But the immortality of the mind by no means seems to infer
the immortality of the body. On the contrary, the greatest
conceivable energy of mind would probably exhaust and destroy the
strength of the body. A temperate vigour of mind appears to be
favourable to health, but very great intellectual exertions tend
rather, as has been often observed, to wear out the scabbard.
Most of the instances which Mr Godwin has brought to prove the
power of the mind over the body, and the consequent probability
of the immortality of man, are of this latter description, and
could such stimulants be continually applied, instead of tending
to immortalize, they would tend very rapidly to destroy the human
frame.

The probable increase of the voluntary power of man over his
animal frame comes next under Mr Godwin's consideration, and he
concludes by saying, that the voluntary power of some men, in
this respect, is found to extend to various articles in which
other men are impotent. But this is reasoning against an almost
universal rule from a few exceptions; and these exceptions seem