rights and independence to mankind. Still
however it is incumbent on us to be no less wary and suspicious than
we are bold, and not to imagine, because we have done much, that we are
therefore able to effect every thing.

As was stated in the commencement of this Essay, we know our own
sensations, and we know little more. Matter, whether in its primary
or secondary qualities, is certainly not the sort of thing the vulgar
imagine it to be. The illustrious Berkeley has taught many to doubt of
its existence altogether; and later theorists have gone farther than
this, and endeavoured to shew, that each man, himself while he speaks on
the subject, and you and I while we hear, have no conclusive evidence to
convince us, that we may not, each of us, for aught we know, be the only
thing that exists, an entire universe to ourselves.

We will not however follow these ingenious persons to the startling
extreme to which their speculations would lead us. But, without doing
so, it will not misbecome us to be cautious, and to reflect what we do,
before we take a leap into illimitable space.

SECTION II.

"The sun," we are told, "is a solid body, ninety-five millions of miles
distant from the earth we inhabit, one million times larger in cubic
measurement, and to such a degree impregnated with heat, that a comet,
approaching to it within a certain distance, was by that approximation
raised to a heat two thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron."

It will be acknowledged, that there is in this statement much to
believe; and we shall not be exposed to reasonable blame, if we refuse
to subscribe to it, till we have received irresistible evidence of its
truth.

It has already been observed, that, for the greater part of what we
imagine we know on the surface or in the bowels of the earth, we have,
or may have if we please, the evidence of more than one of our senses,
combining to lead to the same conclusion. For the propositions of
astronomy we have no sensible evidence, but that of sight, and an
imperfect analogy, leading from those visible impressions which we can
verify, to a reliance upon those which we cannot.

The first cardinal particular we meet with in the above statement
concerning the sun, is the term, distance. Now, all that, strictly
speaking, we can affirm respecting the sun and other heavenly bodies,
is that we have the same series of impressions respecting them, that we
have respecting terrestrial objects