throughout all parts of the immeasurable
whole. Every moment of duration is determined by all past moments, and
will determine all future movements, and even the position of a grain
of sand cannot be conceived other than it is, without supposing other
changes to an indefinite extent. Let us imagine that grain of sand to be
lying some few feet further inland than it actually does; then must the
storm-wind that drove it in from the sea-shore have been stronger than
it actually was; then must the preceding state of the atmosphere,
by which this wind was occasioned, and its degree of strength being
determined, have been different from what it actually was, and the
preceding changes which gave rise to this particular weather, and so
on. We must suppose a different temperature from that which really
existed--a different constitution of bodies which influenced that
temperature. How can we know that in such a state of weather we have
been supposing, in order to carry this grain of sand a few yards
further, some ancestors of yours might not have perished from hunger,
cold, or heat, long before the birth of that son from whom you are
descended, and thus you might never have been at all, and all that you
have done, and all that you ever hope to do, must have been hindered, in
order that a grain of sand might lie in a different place." * The whole
of the first book is devoted to the necessitated condition of man
in relation to the universe. In one portion there is a succession of
beautiful similes, portraying the blissful state we are in, instead of
being gifted with finer sensibilities, or a prescience, which would be a
curse.

* Fichte's "Destination of Man," pp. 8, 9

Pope, although an ardent disciple of Bolingbroke, did not entirely
forsake the prejudices of childhood; he still indulged in a bare hope of
a future life, which his master, with more consistency, suppressed. So
that when the poet rhymed the propositions of St. John, he pointed them
with "hope" in an eternal future; for that speculation which was still
_probability_ in his day, is now nearly silenced by modern science. But
we must not confound the ideas of futurity, which some of the Deists
expressed, with those of Christianity. They were as different as the
dreams of Christ and Plato were dissimilar. Pope "hoped" for a future
life of intellectual enjoyment devoid of evil, but the heaven of the
gospel is equally as necessary to be counterbalanced by a hell, as