He immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him
on such a course of adventures, and betrayed him into so long a
state of misery and servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he
heard that the state he talked of was only a dream and delusion;
that he had not stirred from the place where he then stood; and that
he had only dipped his head into the water, and immediately taken it
out again.
The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan
that nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a
thousand years are but as one day, can, if He pleases, make a single
day--nay, a single moment--appear to any of His creatures as a
thousand years.
I shall leave my reader to compare these Eastern fables with the
notions of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this
paper; and shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider
how we may extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying
ourselves diligently to the pursuit of knowledge.
The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a
fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he
does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because
he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts;
or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and
the other always enjoying it.
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