ey have a perpetual tendency to such increase as would infallibly
bring down the most tremendous calamities on our posterity.

Berkeley, whom I have already referred to on another subject, and who
is admitted to be one of our profoundest philosophers, has written
a treatise(48) to prove, that the mathematicians, who object to the
mysteries supposed to exist in revealed religion, "admit much greater
mysteries, and even falshoods in science, of which he alleges the
doctrine of fluxions as an eminent example(49)." He observes, that their
conclusions are established by virtue of a twofold error, and that these
errors, being in contrary directions, are supposed to compensate each
other, the expounders of the doctrine thus arriving at what they call
truth, without being able to shew how, or by what means they have
arrived at it.

(48) The Analyst.

(49) Life of Berkeley, prefixed to his Works.

It is a memorable and a curious speculation to reflect, upon how slight
grounds the doctrine of "thousands and thousands of suns, multiplied
without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from
each other, and attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds,"
mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, is built. It may be all true.
But, true or false, it cannot be without its use to us, carefully
to survey the road upon which we are advancing, the pier which human
enterprise has dared to throw out into the vast ocean of Cimmerian
darkness. We have constructed a pyramid, which throws into unspeakable
contempt the vestiges of ancient Egyptian industry: but it stands upon
its apex; it trembles with every breeze; and momentarily threatens to
overwhelm in its ruins the fearless undertakers that have set it up.

It gives us a mighty and sublime idea of the nature of man, to think
with what composure and confidence a succession of persons of the
greatest genius have launched themselves in illimitable space, with
what invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting the midnight oil,
racking their faculties, and almost wearing their organs to dust, in
measuring the distance of Sirius and the other fixed stars, the velocity
of light, and "the myriads of intelligent beings formed for endless
progression in perfection and felicity," that people the numberless
worlds of which they discourse. The illustrious names of Copernicus,
Galileo, Gassendi, Kepler, Halley and Newton impress us with awe; and,
if the astronomy the