an effect as could be construed into the smallest semblance of an
approach towards immortality, yet of the two, a certain attention
to the body seems to have more effect in this respect than an
attention to the mind. The man who takes his temperate meals and
his bodily exercise, with scrupulous regularity, will generally
be found more healthy than the man who, very deeply engaged in
intellectual pursuits, often forgets for a time these bodily
cravings. The citizen who has retired, and whose ideas, perhaps,
scarcely soar above or extend beyond his little garden, puddling
all the morning about his borders of box, will, perhaps, live as
long as the philosopher whose range of intellect is the most
extensive, and whose views are the clearest of any of his
contemporaries. It has been positively observed by those who have
attended to the bills of mortality that women live longer upon an
average than men, and, though I would not by any means say that
their intellectual faculties are inferior, yet, I think, it must
be allowed that, from their different education, there are not so
many women as men, who are excited to vigorous mental exertion.

As in these and similar instances, or to take a larger range,
as in the great diversity of characters that have existed during
some thousand years, no decided difference has been observed in
the duration of human life from the operation of intellect, the
mortality of man on earth seems to be as completely established,
and exactly upon the same grounds, as any one, the most constant,
of the laws of nature. An immediate act of power in the Creator
of the Universe might, indeed, change one or all of these laws,
either suddenly or gradually, but without some indications of
such a change, and such indications do not exist, it. Is just as
unphilosophical to suppose that the life of man may be prolonged