The man who is contented with the universe, who stops at _that_ has at least the satisfaction of dealing with something tangible--but he who don't find the universe large enough for him to expatiate in, and whirls his brains into a belief that there is a necessarily existing something beyond the limits of a world _unlimited_, is in a mental condition no reasonable man need envy. Of the universe, or at least so much of it as our senses have been operated upon by, we have conceptions clear, vivid, and distinct; but when Dr. Clarke tell us of an intelligent Being, not _part_ but _creator_ of that universe, we can form no clear, vivid, distinct, or, in point of fact, _any_ conception of such Being. When he explains that it is infinite and omnipresent, like poor Paddy's famed ale, the explanation 'thickens as it clears;' for being ourselves _finite_, and necessarily present on one small spot of our very small planet, the words _infinite_ and _omnipresent_ do not suggest to us either positive or practical ideas--of course, therefore, we have neither positive nor practical ideas of an infinite and omnipresent Being. We can as easily understand that the universe ever did exist, as we now understand that it does exist--but we cannot conceive its absence for the millionth part of an instant--and really it puzzles one to conceive what those people can be dreaming of who talk as familiarly about the extinction of a universe as the chemist does of extinguishing the flame of his spirit-lamp. The unsatisfactory character of all speculations having for their object 'nonentities with formidable names,' should long ere this have opened men's eyes to the folly of _multiplying causes without necessity_--another rule of philosophising, for which we are indebted to Newton, but to which no superstitious philosophiser pays due attention. Newton himself in his theistical character, wrote and talked as though most blissfully ignorant of that rule. The passages given above from his 'Principia' palpably violate it. But Theists, however learned, pay little regard to any rules of philosophising, which put in peril their fundamental crotchet. A distinguished modern Fabulist [38:1] has introduced to us a philosophical mouse who praised beneficent Deity because of his great regard for mice: for one half of us, quoth he, received the gift of wings, so that if they who have none, should by cats happen to be exterminated, how easily could our 'Heavenly Father,' out of the bats re-establish our exterminated species.