This action being taken, as it is here meant to be conceived, for one of the highest examples of moral greatness. And however we may judge of this action, we must allow that the characters which are implied in this praise of it,--the loftiest kinds of moral excellence,--are more suitable to the highest idea of the object and purpose of a Deity creating worlds, than would be any mere material structure of planets and suns, whether kept in their places by adamantine spheres, wheeling unshaken through the void immense, or themselves wheeling unshaken by the power of a universal law. The thoughts of Rights and Obligations, Duty and Virtue, of Law and Liberty, of Country and Constitution, of the Glory of our Ancestors, the Elevation of our Fellow-Citizens, the Freedom and Happiness and Dignity of Posterity,--are thoughts which belong to a world, a race, a body of beings, of which any one individual, with the capacities which such thoughts imply, is more worthy of account, than millions of millions of mollusks and belemnites, lizards and fishes, sloths and pachyderms, diffused through myriads of worlds. 36. We might illustrate this argument further, by taking actions of the moral character of which there will be less doubt. If we look at the great acts which render Greece illustrious and interesting in our eyes,--such as the death of Socrates, for instance, the triumph of a reverence for Law and a love of country;--can we think it any real diminution of the glory of the universe, if we are reduced to the necessity of rejecting the belief in a multitude of worlds, which though, it may be, peopled with lower animals, contain none endowed with any higher principle than hunger and thirst?