wrong road, and it is seldom that we gain the right one, until we have
trodden back our steps to the starting place. I know but of one thing
that a philosopher should take for granted; and that only because he
is forced to it by an irresistible impulse of his nature; and because,
without doing so, neither truth nor falsehood could exist for him. He
must take for granted the evidence of his senses; in other words, he
must believe in the existence of things, as they exist to his senses. I
_know_ of no other existence, and can therefore _believe_ in no other:
although, reasoning from analogy, I may _imagine_ other existences to
be.--This, for instance, I do as respects the Gods. I see around me, in
the world I inhabit, an infinite variety in the arrangement of matter--a
multitude of sentient beings, possessing different kinds and varying
grades of power and intelligence--from the worm that crawls in the dust,
to the eagle that soars to the sun, and man who marks to the sun its
course. It is possible, it is moreover probable, that, in the worlds
which I see not--in the boundless infinitude and eternal duration of
matter, beings may exist, of every countless variety, and varying grades
of intelligence, inferior and superior to our own, until we descend to
a minimum and rise to a maximum, to which the range of our observation
affords no parallel, and of which our senses are inadequate to the
conception. Thus far, my young friend, 1 believe in the Gods, or in what
you will of existences removed from the sphere of my knowledge. That you
should believe, with positiveness, in one unseen existence or another,
appears to me no crime, although it may appear to me unreasonable; and
so, my doubt of the same should appear to you no moral offence, although
you might account it erroneous. I fear to fatigue your attention, and
will, therefore, dismiss, for the present, these abstruse subjects."

"But we shall both be amply repaid for their discussion, if this truth
remain with you--that an opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a
moral offence, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken;
it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction.--It is a truth; or it
is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue."--[Chapter xiv.]

Miss Wright was a poetess, as well as a politician and writer on ethics.
In her "Fourth of July" address, delivered in the New Harmony Hall, in
1828, in commemoration of the American Independence, i