On this point there remains only one interesting question. Men, animals, and plants, may, for some time, support the rigour of this cold, which is 60 degrees below the freezing point; but could they also support a heat which should be 60 degrees above it? To this we answer, yes, provided we knew as well how to guard against the heat as we do to shelter ourselves from the cold; and if the air could, during the remainder of the year, refresh the earth, in the same manner as the emanations of the heat of the globe warms the air in cold countries. We know of plants, insects, and fish, which live and grow in baths of 45, 50, and even 60 degrees of heat; there are, therefore, species in living nature which can support this degree of heat; and as the negroes are in the human race those whom a strong heat the least incommodes, might we not conclude, according to this hypothesis, that the earth has continued to decline from its original heat, and that the race of negroes are more ancient than that of white people? _GENERAL VIEWS OF NATURE._ FIRST VIEW. Nature is that system of laws established by the Creator for regulating the existence of bodies and the succession of beings. Nature is therefore not a body, for if it were so, it would comprehend every thing; neither is it a being, for in that case it would necessarily be God. We must rather consider Nature as an immense living power, which is in subordination to the Supreme Being, and by his command animates the universe, and whose actions are dependent on, and continued by, his concurrence or consent. This power is that part of Divine omnipotence which is manifested to mankind; it is the cause and effect, the mode and substance, the design and execution. Extremely different from all human art, whose productions are inanimate, Nature is herself a work perpetually alive, an active, an unceasing operator, who knows how to make use of every material, and whose power, though always employed on the same invariable plan, instead of suffering diminution, is perfectly inexhaustible: time, space, and matter, are her means; the universe her object; and motion and life her end.