opinion you have sufficiently proved, necessarily include eternal duration?"

"Of immateriality," said Imlac, "our ideas are negative, and therefore obscure. Immateriality 5 seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay. Whatever perishes is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no parts, and Io therefore admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted or impaired."

"I know not," said Rasselas,how to conceive anything without extension. What is extended must have parts, and you allow that whatever has parts 15 may be destroyed.**

"Consider your own conceptions," replied Imlac, "and the difficulty will be less. You will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk; yet an ideal form has no 20 extension. It is no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing. What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of a grain of corn? or how can either 25 idea suffer laceration? As is the effect, such is the cause; as thought is, such is the power that thinks, a power impassive and indiscerptible."

"But the Being," said Nekayah, "whom I fear to name, the Being which made the soul, can destroy it.** 30He surely can destroy it," answered Imlac, "since, however unperishable in itself, it receives from a higher nature its power of duration. That it

will not perish by any inherent cause or principle of corruption, may be collected from philosophy; but philosophy can tell no more. That it will not be annihilated by him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher authority."

5

The whole assembly stood awhile silent and collected. "Let us return," said Rasselas, "from this scene of mortality. How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he shall never die; that what now acts shall continue 10 its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were perhaps snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the 15 choice of life.'

"To me," said the princess, "the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity."

They then hastened out of the caverns, and under 20 the protection of their guard returned to Cairo.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS

CONCLUDED.

It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile. 25 A few days after their visit to the catacombs the river began to rise.

They were confined to their house. The whole region being under water, gave them no invitation to

any excursions, and being well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with comparisons of the different forms of life which they had observed, and with various schemes of happiness which each of 5 them had formed.

Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the convent of St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the princess, and wished only to fill it with pious maidens and to be made prioress of the Io order; she was weary of expectation and disgust, and, would gladly be fixed in some unvariable state.

The princess thought that, of all sublunary things, knowledge was the best. She desired first to learn all

sciences, and then purposed to found a college of 15 learned women, in which she would preside, that, by conversing with the old and educating the young, she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise up for the next age models of prudence and patterns of piety.

20

25

The prince desired a little kingdom in which he might administer justice in his own person and see all the parts of government with his own eyes; but he could never fix the limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number of his subjects.

Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be /driven along the stream of life, without directing their course to any particular port.

Of these wishes that they had formed, they well knew that none could be obtained. They deliberated 30 awhile what was to be done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to Abyssinia.

NOTES.

Abbreviations: The Adventurer, Idler, Rambler, are referred to by number. By Dictionary or Dict. is meant Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. Encyc. Brit. is the Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition. Hill, quoted in the notes, refers to the edition of Rasselas by G. Birkbeck Hill (1887). By Life is meant Boswell's Life of Johnson, Hill's edition. Unless otherwise specified, Lobo is Johnson's translation of Legrand's Lobo, Voyage to Abyssinia. A reference to West is the Rev. W. West's edition of Rasselas (1868). Cf. means compare.

II. Ye who. The optimists of the age. Those who believed with Shaftesbury and Pope that this is the best possible world. It was to express his disbelief in such optimism that Johnson wrote Rasselas; cf. Introduction, p. xxxvi, and Rambler, 128.

6. Rasselas. The name is undoubtedly from Ras Sela Christos, or, as it is usually printed in Legrand and Lobo, Rassela Christos, the name of a general or chief of Abyssinia. Ras signifies 'chief' or 'prince,' and the title still exists. The word is the same as the Hebrew Rosh, Gen. xlvi. 21, Ezekiel (Rev. Ver.) Xxxviii. 2, 3; xxxix. I. Sela Christos means 'image of Christ,' according to Ludolph's History of Ethiopia (1681). Many Abyssinian names were compounded of Christian names, as of Christ, the Trinity, Mary. In Ludolph the name appears as Ras-seelax, x being pronounced sh in Portuguese, so that this form is somewhat nearer the one given by Johnson. A writer in Notes and Queries, XII. (3d series) 411, suggests that Johnson may have had in mind an Abyssinian prince who is said to have lived for a time at the court of George II. Even if there were such a person, however, the fact explains nothing not better explained in other ways.