THE PHILOSOPHY OF A FUTURE STATE. 



power for impelling waggons along roads, and 

 hrge 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 con 

 tained 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 sur 

 rounding 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 Tind 

 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, adorn 

 ed with lofty columns, palaces, and temples, to 

 arise, in a spot where nothing was formerly be 

 held but a vast desert or a putrid marsh ; and can 

 make &quot; the wilderness and the solitary place to 

 be glad, and the desert to bud and blossom as 

 the rose.&quot; 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 me 

 morable events which have happened in the world 

 since time began ; he can survey the present as 

 pect of the moral world among all nations ; 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 &quot; eye 

 hath not seen,&quot; throughout the countless ages of 

 eternity. 



What an immense multitude of ideas, in rela 

 tion 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 I whose capacious intellect 

 seemed to grasp the vast system of universal na 

 ture, who weighed the ponderous masses of the 

 planetary globes, and unfolded the laws by which 

 their diversified phenomena are produced, and 

 their motions directed ! 



&quot; H, while on this dim spot, where mortals toll, 

 Closed In dust, from Motion s simple laws 



Could trace the secret hand of Providence, 



Wide-working through this universal frame. 



AH 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.&quot; 



Such minds as those of Socrates, Plato, Archi 

 medes, Locke, Boyle, La Place, and similar il 

 lustrious characters, likewise demonstrate the 

 vast capacity of the human intellect, the exten 

 sive range of thought it is capable of prosecut 

 ing, 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 be 

 ing trained to similar degrees of intellectual ex 

 cellence. 



And as man is endued with capacious intel 

 lectual 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 en 

 dowed with the faculty of memory, by which the 

 mind retains the ideas of past objects and percep 

 tions, 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 men 

 tal improvement. If the information we ori 

 ginally derive through the medium of the senses 

 were to vanish the moment the objects are re 

 moved from our immediate perception, we 

 should be left as devoid of knowledge as if we 

 had never existed. But, by the power of memo 

 ry, we can treasure up, as in a storehouse, the 

 greater part, if not the whole of the ideas, no 

 tions, 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 acces 

 sions 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 im 

 pressions, 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 al 

 most to transcend belief. It is reported of Sene 

 ca, 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 everv individual of his numerous army by 



