From the Book :"In the old age of his intellect (which atthis point seemed to taste a little of decrepitude), Strauss declared [1] that the doctrine ofimmortality has recently lost the assistanceof a passable argument, inasmuch as it hasbeen discovered that the stars are inhabited;for where, he asks, could room now be foundfor such a multitude of souls? Again, in viewof the current estimates of prospective population for this earth, some people have begun toentertain alarm for the probable condition ofEngland (if not Great Britain) when she gets(say) seventy millions that are allotted to heragainst six or eight hundred millions for theUnited States. We have heard in some systems of the pressure of population upon food;but the idea of any pressure from any quarter upon space is hardly yet familiar. Still, Isuppose that many a reader must have beenstruck with the naive simplicity of the hyperbole of St. John, [2] perhaps a solitary unit of itskind in the New Testament: "the which ifthey should be written every one, I supposethat even the world itself could not containthe books that should be written.""