He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy, metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to sound me, and see if there was anything in me besides hectic fever. I was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been since. I gave him very modest and very diffident answers. But when I got upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into something like argument with him. I drove him up, as I thought, into a corner, from which he could not escape. "Sir, it will follow from what you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both infinite and eternal." "Very true," said Dr. Hersey, "your inference is just, the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be both eternal and infinite." Here I was brought up! I was defeated. I was not prepared for this answer. This was fifty-five years ago. When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with Dr. Price. I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my house, and at the houses and tables of my friends. In some of our most unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly said to me: "I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal and infinite. It seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause; and an infinite wisdom, goodness and power, that could have been induced to produce a universe in time, must have produced it from eternity. It seems to me the effect must flow from the cause." Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being, existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago, conceiving the benevolent project of creating a universe! I have no more to say at present. It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there is now, never will be, and never was but one being who can understand the universe. And that it is not only vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to comprehend it. JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON. QUINCY, September 15, 1813. DEAR SIR,--My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material to my design. Dr. Price was inclined to think that infinite wisdom and goodness could not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these attributes.