beyond any assignable limits, as to suppose that the attraction
of the earth will gradually be changed into repulsion and that
stones will ultimately rise instead of fall or that the earth
will fly off at a certain period to some more genial and warmer
sun.

The conclusion of this chapter presents us, undoubtedly, with
a very beautiful and desirable picture, but like some of the
landscapes drawn from fancy and not imagined with truth, it fails
of that interest in the heart which nature and probability can
alone give.

I cannot quit this subject without taking notice of these
conjectures of Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet concerning the
indefinite prolongation of human life, as a very curious instance
of the longing of the soul after immortality. Both these
gentlemen have rejected the light of revelation which absolutely
promises eternal life in another state. They have also rejected
the light of natural religion, which to the ablest intellects in
all ages has indicated the future existence of the soul. Yet so
congenial is the idea of immortality to the mind of man that they
cannot consent entirely to throw it out of their systems. After
all their fastidious scepticisms concerning the only probable
mode of immortality, they introduce a species of immortality of
their own, not only completely contradictory to every law of
philosophical probability, but in itself in the highest degree
narrow, partial, and unjust. They suppose that all the great,
virtuous, and exalted minds that have ever existed or that may
exist for some thousands, perhaps millions of years, will be sunk
in annihilation, and that only a few beings, not greater in