an average than men, and, though
I would not by any means say that their intellectual faculties are
inferior, yet, I think, it must be allowed that, from their different
education, there are not so many women as men, who are excited to
vigorous mental exertion.

As in these and similar instances, or to take a larger range, as in the
great diversity of characters that have existed during some thousand
years, no decided difference has been observed in the duration of human
life from the operation of intellect, the mortality of man on earth
seems to be as completely established, and exactly upon the same
grounds, as any one, the most constant, of the laws of nature. An
immediate act of power in the Creator of the Universe might, indeed,
change one or all of these laws, either suddenly or gradually, but
without some indications of such a change, and such indications do not
exist, it. Is just as unphilosophical to suppose that the life of man
may be prolonged beyond any assignable limits, as to suppose that the
attraction of the earth will gradually be changed into repulsion and
that stones will ultimately rise instead of fall or that the earth will
fly off at a certain period to some more genial and warmer sun.

The conclusion of this chapter presents us, undoubtedly, with a very
beautiful and desirable picture, but like some of the landscapes drawn
from fancy and not imagined with truth, it fails of that interest in
the heart which nature and probability can alone give.

I cannot quit this subject without taking notice of these conjectures
of Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet concerning the indefinite prolongation of
human life, as a very curious instance of the longing of the soul after
immortality. Both these gentlemen have rejected the light of revelation
which absolutely promises eternal life in another state. They have also
rejected the light of natural religion, which to the ablest intellects
in all ages has indicated the future existence of the soul. Yet so
congenial is the idea of immortality to the mind of man that they
cannot consent entirely to throw it out of their systems. After all
their fastidious scepticisms concerning the only probable mode of
immortality, they introduce a species of immortality of their own, not
only completely contradictory to every law of philosophical
probability, but in itself in the highest degree narrow, partial, and
unjust. They suppose that all the great, virtuous, and exalted minds
t