5. If vice, as we are taught to believe, will be punished, according to its degrees, in a future state of existence, how much greater would be the mass of misery hereafter, if the whole human race lived to be old, and with increasing habits of wickedness, than it will be in the present contracted duration of human life? It is therefore no less an act of mercy, than justice, that the "wicked live not out half their days."

6. If old age were universal, how difficult and severe would be the conflicts of virtue! To be exposed to the malignant passions of bad men, or, what is often worse, to contend with our own evil propensities for seventy or eighty years, would render the warfare of good men much more perilous, and their future happiness much more precaricus, than it is at present. How few persons who live to be old, escape the idolatrous passion of covetousness? Were old age universal, this passion would probably exclude one half of them from the kingdom of heaven.

7. Did all men live to be old, it would render knowledge stationary. Few men alter their opinions, or admit new truths, after they are forty years of age. None of the contemporary physicians of Dr. Harvey, who had passed that age, admitted his discovery of the circulation of the blood. Now considering that nearly all discoveries in science are mnade by men under forty, and considering the predominating influence and authority which accompany the hostility of old men to new truths, discoveries made by young men could never acquire belief, or an establishment in the world. They owe both, to the small number of philosophers who live to be seventy or eighty years of age.

8. Were longevity universal, with all the deformity from wrinkles, baldness, and the loss of teeth and complexion,

that are usually connected with it, what a gloomy and offensive picture would the assemblies of our fellow-creatures exhibit? In the present small proportion of old people to the young and middle aged, they seem like shades in painting, or like a few decayed trees near a highly cultivated garden, filled with blooming and fragrant flowers, to exhibit the charms of youth and beauty to greater advantage. From an assembly composed exclusively of old men and women, we should turn our eyes with pain and disgust.

If the causes of premature deaths which have been assigned, be correct, instead of complaining of them, it becomes us, in the present state of the cultivation, population, government, religion, morals, and knowledge in the world, to consider them as subjects for praise and thanksgiving to the wise and benevolent Governor of the Universe.

While we thus do homage to the divine wisdom and goodness, let us look forward to the time when the improvements in the physical, moral, and political condition of the world, predicted in the Old Testament, shall render the early and distressing separation of parents and children, and of husbands and wives, wholly unnecessary; when the physical and moral sources of those apparent evils shall be removed by the combined influence of philosophy and religion, and when old age shall be the only outlet of human life. The following verses, taken from the 65th chapter of the prophecy of Isaaih, justify a belief in an order of things, such as has been mentioned: "There shall be no more thence an infant of days," [or an infant that has lived but a few days] "nor an old man that hath not filled his days, for the child shall die an hundred years old. And they shall build houses, and

inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit, they shall not plant, and another eat, for as the days of a tree, are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands."

AN EULOGIUM UPON DR. WILLIAM CULLEN, PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE OF PHYSIC, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH; DELIVERED BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA, ON THE 9TH OF JULY, AGREEABLY TO THEIR

VOTE OF THE 4TH OF MAY, 1790, AND AFTERWARDS PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST.

B

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

Y your unanimous vote, to honor with an Eulogium, the character of the late DR. WILLIAM CULLEN, Professor of medecine in the University of Edinburgh, you have done equal homage to science and humanity. This illustrious Physician was the Preceptor of many of us :-He was moreover a distinguished citizen of the republic of medicine, and a benefactor to mankind; and although, like the sun, he shone in a distant hemisphere, yet many of the rays of his knowledge have fallen upon this quarter of the globe. I rise, therefore, to mingle your grateful praises of him, with the numerous offerings of public and private respect which have been paid to his memory in his native country. Happy

will be the effects of such acts of distant sympathy, if they should serve to unite the influence of science with that of commerce, to lessen the prejudices of nations against each other, and thereby to prepare the way for the operation of that dive system of morals, whose prerogative alone it is, to teach mankind that they are brethren, and to make the name of a fellow-creature, in every region of the world, a signal for brotherly affection.

In executing the task you have imposed upon me, I shall confine myself to such parts of Dr Cullen's character as came within the compass of my own knowledge, during two years residence in Edinburgh.-To his fellow citizens in Great Britain, who were more intimately acquainted with him, we must resign the history of his domestic character, as well as the detail of all those steps which, in early life, led him to his unparalleled height of usefulness and fame.

DR. CULLEN possessed a great and original genius. By genius, in the present instance, I mean a power in the human mind of discovering the relation of distant truths, by the shortest train of intermediate propositions. This precious gift of Heaven, is composed of a vigorous imagination, quick sensibility, a talent for extensive and accurate observation, a faithful memory, and a sound judgment. These faculties were all united in an eminent degree in the mind of Dr. Cullen. His imagination surveyed all nature at a glance, and, like a camera obscura, seemed to produce in his mind a picture of the whole visible creation. His sensibility was so exquisite that the smallest portions of truth acted upon it. By means of his talent for observation he collected knowledge from every thing he heard, saw, or read, and from every person with whom he conversed. His memory was the faithful re

pository of all his ideas, and appeared to be alike accurate upon all subjects. Over each of these faculties of his mind a sound judgment presided, by means of which he discovered the relation of ideas to each other, and thereby produced those new combinations which constitute principles i science. This process of the mind has been called invention, and is totally different from a mere capacity of acquiring learning, or collecting knowledge from the discoveries of others. It elevates man to a distant resemblace of his Maker; for the discovery of truth, is the perception of things as they appear to the Divine Mind.

In contemplating the human faculties, thus exquisitely formed, and exactly balanced, we feel the same kind of pleasure which arises from a view of a magnificent palace, or an extensive and variegated prospect; but with this difference, that the pleasure, in the first instance, is as much superior to that which arises from contemplating the latter objects, as the mind of man is superior, in its importance, to the most finished productions of nature or of art,

DR. CULLEN possessed not only the genius that has been described, but an uncommon share of learning, reading, and knowledge.

His learning was of a peculiar and useful kind He ap peared to have overstepped the slow and tedious forms of the schools, and, by the force of his understanding, to have seized upon the great ends of learning, without the assistance of many of those means which were contrived for the use of less active minds. He read the ancient Greek and Roman writers only for the sake of the knowledge which they contained, without wasting any of the efforts of his genius in attempting