40 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



and effete with age, and man himself deteriorating 

 in character, and diminishing at once in intellectual 

 and bodily stature. But to us, who have the ex> 

 perience of some additional thousands of years, the 

 question of permanence is already, in a great measure, 

 decided in the affirmative. The refined speculations 

 of modern astronomy, grounding their conclusions 

 on observations made at very remote periods, have 

 proved to demonstration, that one at least of the 

 great powers of nature, the force of gravitation, 

 the main bond and support of the material universe, 

 has undergone no change in intensity from a high 

 antiquity. The stature of mankind is just what it 

 was three thousand years ago, as the specimens of 

 mummies which have been examined at various 

 times sufficiently show. The intellect of Newton, 

 Laplace, or La Grange, may stand in fair competition 

 with that of Archimedes, Aristotle, or Plato ; and 

 the virtues and patriotism of Washington with the 

 brightest examples of ancient history. 



(31.) Again, the researches of chemists have 

 shown that what the vulgar call corruption, destruc- 

 tion, &c., is nothing but a change of arrangement of 

 the- same ingredient elements, the disposition of the 

 same materials into other forms, without the loss 

 or actual destruction of a single atom ; and thus any 

 doubts of the permanence of natural laws are dis- 

 countenanced, and the whole weight of appearances 

 thrown into the opposite scale. One of the most 

 obvious cases of apparent destruction is, when any 

 thing is ground to dust and scattered to the winds. 

 But it is one thing to grind a fabric to powder, and 

 another to annihilate its materials : scattered as they 



