'The empyreal waste'.—P. 9.
'Ne se peut-il point qu'il y a un grand espace au-delà de la région des étoiles? Que ce soit le ciel empyrée, ou non, toujours cet espace immense quî environne toute cette region, pourra être rempli de bonheur et de gloire. Il pourra être conçu comme l'océan, òu se rendent les fleuves de toutes les créatures bienheureuses, quand elles seront venues à leur perfection dans le système des étoiles.' —Leibnitz dans la Theodicée, part i. par. 19.
ENDNOTE C.
'Whose unfading light', etc.—P. 9.
It was a notion of the great Mr. Huygens, that there may be fixed stars at such a distance from our solar system, as that their light should not have had time to reach us, even from the creation of the world to this day.
ENDNOTE D.
'The neglect Of all familiar prospects', etc.—P. 10.
It is here said, that in consequence of the love of novelty, objects which at first were highly delightful to the mind, lose that effect by repeated attention to them. But the instance of habit is opposed to this observation; for there, objects at first distasteful are in time rendered entirely agreeable by repeated attention.
The difficulty in this case will be removed if we consider, that, when objects at first agreeable, lose that influence by frequently recurring, the mind is wholly passive, and the perception involuntary; but habit, on the other hand, generally supposes choice and activity accompanying it: so that the pleasure arises here not from the object, but from the mind's conscious determination of its own activity; and consequently increases in proportion to the frequency of that determination.
It will still be urged perhaps, that a familiarity with disagreeable objects renders them at length acceptable, even when there is no room for the mind to resolve or act at all. In this case, the appearance must be accounted for one of these ways.