The infinity of stars which we see above us has not escaped the fictions of presumptive credulity. Amongst the glittering hosts, there is one said to have been set apart for the celestial court, where God holds regal state in the midst of his courtiers. This place is the residence of the blessed, wither the souls of the virtuous are conveyed after leaving the body. We need not dwell upon an opinion so frivolous and so contradictory to common sense. It is well enough ascertained that what we denominate the heavens is merely a continuation of the air which surrounds us--a fluid through which the other planets move, like the earth which we inhabit, unsustained and unconnected with any solid mass whatever. § 6. The priests having, like the pagans with their Gods and goddesses, invented a heaven, where God and the blessed might dwell; after the same example next they contrived a hell, or subterranean place, to which, they assure us, the spirits of wicked men go down for the purpose of being everlastingly tormented. Now, the word hell, in its original sense, imports no more than a place dark and deep; and the poets invented it as the opposite to the residence of the blessed, which they represented as high and bright. This is the exact signification of the Latin terms inferus and inferi, and the Greek hades; any dark place such as a sepulchre, or whatever was fearful from its depth and obscurity. The whole sprung from the imagination of the poet and the knavery of the priests--the former knowing how to make an impression in this way, on weak, timid, and melancholy minds; and the latter having rather more substantial reasons for continuing the delusion. CHAP. V.--ON THE SOUL. § 1. This is rather a more delicate subject to handle than the last which we had occasion to treat of, viz: Heaven and Hell. For the reader's sake, therefore, it must be treated at greater length; but before defining it, an exposition of the opinions of the most celebrated philosophers is necessary, which will be given in a few words, in order that the reader may be the better enabled to carry it along with him. § 2. Their opinions are exceedingly varied. Some have pretended that the soul is a spirit or immaterial essence; others have maintained that it is a part of the Divinity; others assert that it is the concord of all parts of the body; and some uphold that it is the most subtle part of the blood, separated into the brain, and thence distributed through the nervous system. If this is established, the soul must take its origin from the heart which creates it; and the place where it exercises its noblest functions must be the brain, as that organ is the most purified from the grosser parts of the blood.