“In stretching our view through the wide expanse which surrounds us, we perceive a system of bodies receding behind one another, till they are lost in immeasureable distance. This region beyond though to us dark and unexplored, from the impossibility of a limit, yet gives us its infinity as the most unquestionable of all principles. But though the actual extent to which this infinite region is occupied by the bodies of which the universe is composed, is far beyond our measure and our view, and though there be nothing without to compel us anywhere to stop in enlarging its bounds, Nature herself gives us other principles not less certain, which prove that she must have limits, and that it is impossible her frame can fill the abyss which surrounds her. Her different parts have each their fixed place, their stated distance. You may as well measure infinity by mile-stones as fill it with stars. To remove any one from an infinite distance from another, you must in fixing their place, set limits to the infinity you assume. You can advance from unity as far as you please, but there is no actual number at an infinite distance from it. You may in the same manner, add world to world as long as you please, only because no number of them can fill infinity, or approach nearer to fill it. We have the doctrine of Nature's abhorrence of a _vacuum_; it is from a _plenum_ like this she shrinks, as from a region in which all her substance would be dissipated into nothing. Her frame is composed of parts which have each their certain proportion and relation. It subsists by mutual attractions and repulsions, lessening and increasing with distance; by a circulation which, actually passing through, every part rejects the idea of a space which it could never pervade. Infinity cannot revolve; the circulation of Nature cannot pervade infinity. The globe we inhabit, and all its kindred planets, revolve in orbits which embrace a common power in the centre which animates and regulates their motions, and on the influence of which their internal energies evidently depend. That we may not be lost in looking for it in the boundless regions without, our great physical power is all within, in the bosom of our own circle; and the same facts which prove the greatness of this power to uphold, to penetrate, to enliven at such a distance, shew in what manner it might at last become weak,—become nothing. Whatever relations we may have to bodies without, or whatever they may have to one another, their influence is all directed to particular points,—to given distances. Material Nature has no substance, can make no effort, capable of pervading infinity. The light itself of all her powers the most expansive, in diffusing itself through her own frame, shews most of all her incapacity to occupy the region beyond, in which (as the necessary result of its own effort) it soon sinks, feeble and faint, where all its motion is but