80 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF A FUTURE STATE. 



those arts and sciences which have their founda 

 tion in the moral depravity of our nature, will, of 

 course, pass away, as exercises which were pe 

 culiar to the deranged state of our terrestrial 

 habitation, and the degraded condition of its 

 inhabitants ; and which, therefore, can have no 

 place in a scene of moral perfection. But the 

 principles of the mathematics, and the axioms 

 on which they are built, the truths of natural 

 philosophy, astronomy, geography, mechanics, 

 and similar sciences, will be recognised, and 

 form the basis of reasoning and of action, so 

 long as we are sentient beings, and have a rela 

 tion to the material system of the universe. Ma 

 ny truths, indeed, which now require much study, 

 and long and intricate trains of reasoning before 

 they can be acquired, may be perceived by sim 

 ple intuition, or, at least, be more easily and 

 rapidly apprehended than at present. If a genius 

 like that of Sir Isaac Newton, could perceive at 

 a glance, the truth of Euclid s propositions in 

 geometry, without attending to every part of the 

 process requisite for ordinary minds, we may 

 reasonably conclude, that, in a world where the 

 physical and moral obstructions to intellectual 

 energy are removed, every science, and every 

 relation subsisting among corporeal and intellec 

 tual beings, will be more clearly, rapidly, and 

 comprehensively perceived and understood. 



Many striking instances have occasionly oc 

 curred, of the capacity and vigour of the human 

 mind, even amidst the obscurities, and the ob 

 structions to mental activity which exist in the 

 present state of things. The illustrious Pascal, 

 no less celebrated for his piety than for his intel 

 lectual acquirements, when under the age of 

 twelve years, and while immersed in the study 

 of languages, without books, and without an in 

 structor, discovered and demonstrated most of 

 the propositions in the first book of Euclid, be 

 fore he knew that such a book was in exist 

 ence to the astonishment of every mathemati 

 cian ; so that, at that early age, he was an in- 

 /entor of geometrical science. He afterwards 

 k -nade some experiments and discoveries on the 

 nature of sound, and on the weight of the air, 

 and demonstrated the pressure of the atmos 

 phere : and, at the age of sixteen, composed a 

 treatise on Conic Sections, which in the judg 

 ment of men of the greatest abilities, was viewed 

 as an astonishing effort of the human mind. At 

 nineteen years of age, he invented an arithme 

 tical machine by which calculations are made, 

 not only without the help of a pen, but even with 

 out a person s knowing a single rule in arithme 

 tic; and by the age of twenty-four, he had 

 acquired a proficiency in almost every branch 

 of human knowledge, when his mind became 

 entirely absorbed in the exercises of religion. 

 The celebrated Grotius, at the age of thirteen, 

 only a year after his arrival at the university of 

 Leyden, maintained public theses in mathe 



matics, philosophy and law, with universal ap 

 plause. At the age of fourteen, he ventured to 

 form literary plans which required an amazing 

 extent of knowledge ; and he executed them in 

 such perfection, that the literary world was struck 

 with astonishment. At this eatly aj:c he pub- 

 lished an edition of Martianus Cupella, and 

 acquitted himself of the task in a manner which 

 would have done honour to the greatest scholars 

 of the age. At the age of seventeen he entered 

 on the profession of an advocate, and pleaded 

 his first cause at Delf, with the greatest reputa 

 tion, having previously made an extraordinary 

 progress in the knowledge of the sciences. 

 The Admirable Crichton, who received his edu 

 cation at Perth and St. Andrews, by the time 

 he had reached his twentieth year, was master of 

 ten languages, and had gone through the whole 

 circle of the sciences as they were then under 

 stood. At Paris he one day engaged in a dis 

 putation, which lasted nine hours, in the presence 

 of three thousand auditors, against four doctors of 

 the church and fifty masters, on every subject 

 they could propose, and having silenced all his an 

 tagonists, he came off amidst the loudest acclama 

 tions, though he had spent no time in previous 

 preparation for the contest. Gassendi, a cele 

 brated philosopher of France, at the age of four, 

 declaimed little sermons of his own composi 

 tion ; at the age of seven, spent whole nihts iii 

 observing the motions of the heavenly bodies, of 

 which he acquired a considerable knowledge 

 at sixteen, he was appointed professor of rhe 

 toric at Digne, and at the age of nineteen, he 

 was elected professor of philosophy in the uni 

 versity of Aix. His vast knowledge of philosophy 

 and mathematics was ornamented by a sincere 

 attachment to the Christian religion, and a life 

 formed upon its principles and precepts. Jere 

 miah Horrox, a name celebrated in the annals 

 of astronomy, before he attained the age of 

 seventeen, had acquired, solely by his own indus 

 try, and the help of a few Latin authors, a most 

 extensive and accurate knowledge of astronomy, 

 and of the branches of mathematical learning 

 connected with it. He composed astronomical 

 tables for himself, and corrected the errors of the 

 most celebrated astronomers of his time. He 

 calculated a transit of the planet, Venus across 

 the sun s disk, and was the first of mortals who 

 beheld this singular phenomenon, which is now 

 considered of so much importance in astronomi 

 cal science. Sir Isaac Newton, the fame of 

 whose genius has extended over the whole ci 

 vilized world, made his great discoveries in geo 

 metry and fluxions, and laid the foundation of his 

 two celebrated works, his &quot; Principia&quot; and &quot; Op 

 tics,&quot; by the time he was twenty-four years of age; 

 and yet these works contain so many abstract 

 profound and sublime truths, that only the first rat* 

 mathematicians are qualified to understand and 

 appreciate them. In learning mathematics, h 



