offer from any other mouth, are not these among the traits of the picture 

 which death has photographed in the recollection of all his friends ? What 

 has become of the head, so subtle in its processes and manifold, so imagina- 

 tive and so abstruse, at home with arithmetical and rhetorical figures alike, 

 that could contract its scrutiny to the most minute and vanishing point, and yet 

 had room for the broad revolutions of the skies ? What has become of that ? 

 Is it dust ? If so, then it is dust that praises God ! Despite David's doubt- 

 ing inquiry, sepulchres are monuments, not only to mortals, but to the Most 

 High. But the dweller has gone from this slight, curious, convoluted, and 

 bone-protected rotunda of a house, whither, who knows ? or why should we 

 wish with detail of circumstance now to comprehend ? Was the abode made 

 for the inmate, or the inmate for the abode ? Can the occupant not move 

 into another mansion, when, in this clay hut, it has notice to quit ? I refer 

 the question to the Builder, above as below, if you think by his inspiration he 

 has not replied. 



Had the " Mecanique Celeste " an author, and the celestial mechanism 

 none which gave its title to the book ? or shall the human author perish while 

 the book remains ? It were as natural to think, that, while the geometry of 

 the heavens abides, the great Geometer is dead. If the particles made me, 

 when they separate I may not be. But, if I draw or my author wove them 

 for my earthly dress, finer particles may serve me in another form and state ; 

 and I should as soon think the atoms had made God as that they could fash- 

 ion a human soul. 



This, then, is the lesson of the life and character of the astronomer and 

 geometrician, Benjamin Peirce : even a faith we cannot demonstrate or argue 

 into existence, as like some American or African river it takes its rise in 

 distant lakes or mountains unseen from these lower plains, yet which cannot 

 be argued down ! I therefore exhort you to revere, as he did, the moral 

 nature, your own religious constitution and spiritual frame. He believed in 

 the simple unity of God, and enduring substance of the soul. But he is too 

 great to be claimed by any denomination or sect, and is one of those models 

 of humanity by which all the heats of parties are rebuked, a member of that 

 church which is society, and has no articles or forms, any more than do the 

 angels, those pure flames of love. Let us add his monument, his memory, to 

 that of Bowditch, and of all who have been as famous for virtue as for 

 knowledge ; and, in humble spheres, let us emulate the faithfulness which 

 makes all deeds of equal worth, as the smallest vessels sail on the great 

 parallels of the sea. 



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