It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest. - Samuel Johnson

[Imlac continues] "It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose to think? Matter can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion: to which of these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be annexed? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or another, are modes of material existence, all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If matter be once without thought, it can only be made to think by some new modification, but all the modifications which it can admit are equally unconnected with cogitative powers."

Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.

Nothing ... will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.