We are enjoined, some times with a vehemence approaching that of ecclesiastical anathema, to refuse to consider anything which lies beyond the range of experience. By experience is meant the perceptions of our bodily senses, the absolute completeness and finality of which, we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant for which must at all events be produced from other authority than that of the senses themselves. On this ground we are called upon to discard, as worthy of nothing but derision, the ideas of eternity and infinity. But to dislodge these ideas from our minds is impossible; just as impossible as it is to dislodge any idea that has entered through the channels of the senses; and this being so, it is surely conceivable that they may not be mere illusions, but real extensions of our intelligence beyond the domain of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward progress of our nature. Of course if these ideas correspond to reality, physical science, though true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, or even bear any considerable relation to the whole truth, since it necessarily presents Being as limited by space and time. Whither obedience to the dictates of the higher part of our nature will ultimately carry us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, to say; but there seems no substantial reason for refusing to believe that it carries us towards a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the mode in which we shall pass into that better state, or of its precise relation to our present existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise valid, of our general destiny. A transmutation of humanity, such as we can conceive to be brought about by the gradual prevalence of higher motives of action, and the gradual elimination thereby of what is base and brutish, is surely no more incredible than the actual development of humanity, as it is now, out of a lower animal form or out of inorganic matter.