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CERTAIN, CERTAINTY.

How old may your friend Christopher be? Twenty-eight. I have seen both his contract of marriage, and the register of his birth: I have known him from a child; twenty-eight is his age. I am as certain of it as certain can be.

Soon after this man's answer, who was so sure of what he said, and of twenty others, in confirmation of the same thing, I happened to be informed that, for private reasons, and by an odd contrivance, the register of Christopher's birth was antedated. They to whom I had spoken, knowing nothing of this, are still in the greatest certainty of what is not.

Had you, in Copernicus's time, asked all the world, Did the sun rise, did the sun set, to-day? they would, one and all, have answered, That's a certainty; we are fully certain of it: thus they were certain, and yet mistaken.

Witchcraft, divinations, and possessions, were, for a long time, universally accounted the most certain things in the world. What numberless crowds have seen all those fine things, and have been certain of them! but at present, such certainty begins to lose its credit.

A A young man, just entered on geometry, and gone no farther than the definition of triangles, calls on me: Are not you certain, said I to him, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles? He answers me, that, so far from being certain, he has not a clear idea of the proposition; on which I demonstrate it to him; this, indeed, makes him very certain of it, and he will be so as long as he lives.

Here

Here is a certainty very different from the former: they were only probabilities, which, on being searched into, are found errors; but mathematical certainty is immutable and eternal.

I exist, I think, I feel pain; is all this as certain as a geometrical truth? Yes. And why? Because these truths are proved by the same principle, that a thing cannot, at the same time, be and not be. I cannot, at one and the same time, exist and not exist, feel and not feel. A triangle cannot have and not have a hundred and eighty degrees, the sum of two right angles.

Thus the physical certainty of my existence and my sensation, and mathematical certainty, are of a like validity, though differing in kind.

But this is by no means applicable to the certainty founded on appearances, or the unanimous relations of men.

How, say you, are not you certain that there is such a city as Pekin? Have you not some Pekin manufactures? Are you not certain of the existence of Pekin from the accounts of persons of different nations and different opinions, and writing violently against each other, when preaching the truth in that city. I answer, that it is highly probable there was such a city at that time, but I would not lay my life on its existence; whereas at any time will I stake my life that the three angles of a triangle are equal to wo right angles.

The DICTIONAIRE ENCYCLOPEDIQUE has a very droll assertion, that should all Paris say that Marshal Saxe is risen from the dead, a man ought to be as sure and certain of it, as he is that the marshal gained the battle of Fontenoy, on hearing all Paris say so. Excellent reasoning! I believe

I believe all Paris when it tells me a thing mo. rally possible; must I therefore believe all Paris when it tells me a thing which is both morally and naturally impossible?

The author of this article, I suppose, was in a bantering strain, and the other author against whom it was written, probably means no more by his extatic applauses at the end of it.

CHAIN OF EVENTS.

IT is an old supposition, that all events are linked together by an invincible fatality: this is destiny, which Homer makes superior to Jupiter himself. This sovereign of gods and men frankly declares that he cannot save his son Sarpedon from dying at the time appointed. Sarpedon was born at the very instant that he was to be born, at any other he could not be born; so he could not die any where but before Troy; he could be buried no where but in Lycia; his body was at the destined time to produce herbs and pulse, which were to be changed into the substance of some Lycians. His heirs were

to institute a new form of government in his dominions; this new form was to affect the neighbouring kingdoms, and this put those who bordered on these neighbouring kingdoms on new measures of peace or war: thus the fate of the whole earth came gradually to be determined by that of Sarpedon, which depended on another event, and this by a chain of other events, was connected with the origin of things.

Had only one of these transactions been differently disposed, it would have caused a different universe; and that the present universe

should

should exist and not exist is an impossibility, therefore it was not possible for Jupiter, with all his omnipotence, to save his son's life.

This system of necessity and fatality, has, according to Leibnitz, been struck out by himself, under the appellation of SUFFICIENT REASON, but it is in reality of very ancient date; that no effect is without a cause, and that, often, the least cause produces the greatest effects, is what the world is not to be taught at this time of day.

My Lord Bolingbroke owns, that the trivial, quarrel between the Duchess of Marlborough and Mrs. Masham put him upon making the separate treaty between Queen Anne and Lewis XIV. This treaty brought on the peace of Utrecht. This peace settled Philip V. on the Spanish throne. Philip V. dispossessed the house of Austria of Naples and Sicily; thus the Spanish prince, who is now king of Naples, evidently owes his sovereignty to Mrs. Masham he would not have had it, perhaps he would not so much as have been born, had the Duchess of Marlborough behaved with due complaisance towards the Queen of England; his existence at Naples depended on a few follies committed at the court of London. Enquire into the situation of all the nations on the globe, and they all derive from a chain of events, apparently quite unconnected with any one thing, and connected with every thing. In this immense machine all is wheel-work, pully, cords, and spring.

It is the same in the physical system: a wind blowing from the south of Africa and the austral seas, brings with it part of the African at

mosphere,

formerly ghosts used to hie away at the crowing of the cock.

Fancy is, at first, ravished in beholding the imperceptible ascent from senseless matter to organized bodies, from plants to zoophytes, from zoophytes to animals, from these to men, from men to genii, from these æthereal genii to immaterial essence, and lastly numberless different orders of these essences, ascending through a succession of increasing beauties and perfections, to God himself. The devout are mightily taken with this hierarchy, as representing the pope and his cardinals, followed by the archbishops and bishops, and then by the reverend train of rectors, vicars, unbeneficed priests, deacons, and subdeacons; then come the regulars, and the capuchins bring up the rear.

But from God to his most perfect creatures the distance is something greater than between the pope and the dean of the sacred college; this dean may come to be pope, whereas the most perfect of the genii never can be God.' Infinitude lies between God and him.

Neither does this chain, this pretended gradation, exist any longer in vegetables and animals, some species of plants and animals being totally extinguished. The murex is not to be found; it was forbidden to eat the griffin and ixion, which, whatever Bochart may say, have, for ages past, not been in nature; where then is the chain?

If no species have been lost, yet it is manifest they may be destroyed, for lions and rhinoceroses are growing very scarce.

It is far from being improbable that there have been breeds of men now no longer existing;

but

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