His enumeration of "the few simple elements of the natural faith," is as clear and cogent as was ever made. He urges the delight in permanence and stability, in immense spaces and reaches of time. "Every thing is prospective, and man is to live hereafter." He urges that: "The implanting of a desire indicates that the gratification of that desire is in the constitution of the creature that feels it; the wish for food; the wish for motion; the wish for sleep, for society, for knowledge, are not random whims, but grounded in the structure of the creature, and meant to be satisfied by food; by motion; by sleep; by society; by knowledge. If there is the desire to live, and in larger sphere, with more knowledge and power, it is because life and knowledge and power are good for us, and we are the natural depositaries of these gifts." He ranks as a hint of endless being the novelty which perpetually attends life: "The soul does not age with the body." "Every really able man, in whatever direction he work--a man of large affairs--an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter--if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this 'Better,' this flying ideal but the perpetual promise of his Creator?" The prophecy of the intellect is enunciated in stirring tones: "All our intellectual action, not promises but bestows a feeling of absolute existence. We are taken out of time, and breathe a purer air. I know not whence we draw the assurance of prolonged life: of a life which shoots that gulf we call death, and takes hold of what is real and abiding, by so many claims as from our intellectual history." "As soon as thought is exercised, this belief is inevitable; as soon as virtue glows, this belief confirms itself. It is a kind of summary or completion of man." This reads very much like encouragement to the popular persuasion, yet it comes far short of it; indeed, does not, at any point touch it. The immortality is claimed for the moral and spiritual by whom thought is exercised, in whom virtue glows--for none beside--and for these, the individual conscious existence is not asserted. In the midst of the high argument occur sentences like these: