Religion and government appear to me the two subjects which of all others should belong to the common talk of people who enjoy the blessings of freedom.

Think, one moment.

The earth is a great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution on its axis, receives fifty thousand raw souls and turns off nearly the same number worked up more or less completely.

There must be somewhere a population of two hundred thousand million, perhaps ten or a hundred times as many, earth-born intelligences.

Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings.