Page:Herschel - A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831).djvu/54

 and effete with age, and man himself deteriorating in character, and diminishing at once in intellectual and bodily stature. But to us, who have the experience of some additional thousands of years, the question of permanence is already, in a great measure, decided in the affirmative. The refined speculations of modern astronomy, grounding their conclusions on observations made at very remote periods, have proved to demonstration, that one at least of the great powers of nature, the force of gravitation, the main bond and support of the material universe, has undergone no change in intensity from a high antiquity. The stature of mankind is just what it was three thousand years ago, as the specimens of mummies which have been examined at various times sufficiently show. The intellect of Newton, Laplace, or La Grange, may stand in fair competition with that of Archimedes, Aristotle, or Plato; and the virtues and patriotism of Washington with the brightest examples of ancient history.

(31.) Again, the researches of chemists have shown that what the vulgar call corruption, destruction, &c., is nothing but a change of arrangement of the same ingredient elements, the disposition of the same materials into other forms, without the loss or actual destruction of a single atom; and thus any doubts of the permanence of natural laws are discountenanced, and the whole weight of appearances thrown into the opposite scale. One of the most obvious cases of apparent destruction is, when any thing is ground to dust and scattered to the winds. But it is one thing to grind a fabric to powder, and another to annihilate its materials: scattered as they