e naturally corrupted or
impaired."

"I know not," said Rasselas, "how to conceive any thing without
extension; what is extended must have parts, and you allow, that
whatever has parts may be destroyed."

"Consider your own conceptions," replied Imlac, "and the difficulty will
be less. You will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no
less real than material bulk: yet an ideal form has no extension. It is
no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses
the idea of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing. What
space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of a grain of
corn? or how can either idea suffer laceration? As is the effect, such
is the cause: as thought, such is the power that thinks; a power
impassive and indiscerptible."

"But the being," said Nekayah, "whom I fear to name, the being which
made the soul, can destroy it."

"He, surely, can destroy it," answered Imlac, "since, however
unperishable, it receives from a superiour nature its power of duration.
That it will not perish by any inherent cause of decay, or principle of
corruption, may be shown by philosophy; but philosophy can tell no more.
That it will not be annihilated by him that made it, we must humbly
learn from higher authority."

The whole assembly stood, awhile, silent and collected. "Let us return,"
said Rasselas, "from this scene of mortality. How gloomy would be these
mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die;
that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall
think on for ever. Those that lie here, stretched before us, the wise
and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of
our present state: they were, perhaps, snatched away, while they were
busy, like us, in the choice of life."

"To me," said the princess, "the choice of life is become less
important; I hope, hereafter, to think only on the choice of eternity."

They then hastened out of the caverns, and, under the protection of
their guard, returned to Cairo.

CHAP. XLIX.

THIS CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED.

It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile: a few days after
their visit to the catacombs the river began to rise.

They were confined to their house. The whole region, being under water,
gave them no invitation to any excursions, and, being well supplied with
materials for talk, they diverted themselves with compari