dread to tyrants, of emancipation to a great people, and of hope to the whole world."

CHAP. XIV.

GRAND OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.

THE Genius paused.-My mind, however, still prepossessed and surcharged with gloomy forebodings, remained a rebel to persuasion; but fearful of offending him by a contrariety of sentiment, I made no reply. After a short interval, turning towards me and fixing on me a look that pierced my very soul; "Thou art silent," said he, "and yet thy heart is agitated with thoughts, to which it dares not give utterance!" Trembling with confusion and embarrassment :-O Genius!" said I, "pardon my weakness: doubtless, nothing but truth itself can proceed from your lips; but your celestial intelligence can distinguish all its nicest tints, where my gross faculties are incapable of discerning any thing but clouds and shades. Yet still I must ingenuously acknowledge, that conviction is very far from having taken root in my heart, and I was fearfully apprehensive, lest perchance my doubts might give you of fence."

"And what is doubt," replied he, “that it should be regarded as a crime? Has man the power of feeling or thinking contrary to the impressions that are made upon him? If a truth be palpable, and of practical importance, let us pity the man who is ignorant of it: for, his

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blindness is a sufficient punishment to him. If it be doubtful and equivocal, how is he to find in it a character or property, which it does not possess? To believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of downright ignorance and folly. The man of credulity involves and bewilders himself in an inextricable labyrinth of contradictions and impossibilities; the man of sense, from a sincere love of truth, dispassionately examines and discusses every question, that he may be rationally correct and consistent in his verdict or opinions; he can endure contradiction with the most patient good nature, because it is from the collision of opposite ideas alone, that the light of evidence is produced. Violence and compulsion are the argumentative implements of falsehood; and, to impose a creed or faith authoritatively, is an arbitrary mode of proceeding, characteristic only of a tyrant.” (y)

Emboldened by these sentiments;-" Well," said I, addressing the Genius," since my reason is free, in vain does it strive to welcome the flattering hope, with which you would console me. A mind, glowing with virtue and sensibility, is prone enough to be hurried away by dreams of fancied happiness; but a cruel reality incessantly dissolves the enchanting vision, and recalls its attention to suffering and wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man, the more I scrutinize into the present state of society, the less appearance do I see of the possibility of a world of wisdom and felicity ever being realized. On surveying the whole face of our hemisphere,

no where can I perceive any symptom or likely prospect of a happy revolution. All Asia is buried in the most profound darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent despotism, (2,) by strokes of the bamboo, and the ominous appear ance of fish or counters, crippled by the immutability of their ceremonial and fashionable code, and by the radical impediments in their language so lamely represented by the characters made use of, offer nothing to my view in their untimely and abortive civilization, but a mere race of automata. The oriental Indian, fettered by a load of prejudices, and pinioned down by the inviolable and sacred ties of their casts, vegetates in an incurable apathy. The Tartar, whether wandering or fixed, continues the same ignorant and ferocious being, and lives in the very barbarism of his ancestors. The Arab, though endowed with a happy genius, loses his national strength, and the fruit of his domestic virtues, in the anarchy of his tribes, and the jealousy of his families. The African, degraded from the state of man, seems irrevocably devoted to servitude. In the North, I see nothing but base serfs, but cattle-like people, the mere playthings of their grand proprietors. Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness have every where thrown nations into a morbid state of paralytic stupor; and vicious habits, by depraving the natural senses, have even destroyed the very instinct of happiness and of truth. In some countries of Europe, indeed, reason begins to expand and to recover its natural elasticity; but even there, can it be said, that the

knowledge of individual minds is common to those nations at large? Has the policy of their governments been turned to the advantage of the people? And, are not these, who call themselves polished, the very people, that, for the three last centuries, have filled the earth with their injustice? Are they not those, who, under the pretext of commerce, have laid India waste, dispeopled a new continent, and who, at present, subject Africa to the most inhuman slavery? Can the birth of liberty be looked for in the bosom of tyrants? And can pure justice be adminstered by the impure. hands of rapacity and insatiate avarice?-O Genius! Whenever I have carried my observations into civilized countries, their illusive wisdom has vanished from my sight. There have I seen riches accumulated in the hands of a few individuals, and the majority of the nation poor and destitute. There have I seen all right and power concentered in certain classes, and the mass of the people passive and precariously dependent. I have seen too the houses or individual families of princes, but no general family or commonwealth of nations: I have seen the interests of government, but no public interest, or public spirit. I have seen, that the whole science of those, who command, consisted in oppressing prudently; and the refined servitude of polished nations, on that account, only appeared to me the more incurable.

"With one obstacle, in particular, my mind was very sensibly struck. In taking a general survey of the globe, I perceived that it was

divided into twenty different systems of religious worship: that each nation had received, or formed for itself a different doctrine, and, by exclusively engrossing the truth to itself, imagined every other to be in error. But if, as is the fact, in this disparity of opinion, the majority deceive themselves, and that too from the purest motives of sincerity, it follows that the human mind as readily imbibes falsehood as truth; and, in that case, how is it to be enlightened? How are the darling prejudices, that have early taken root in the mind, to be extirpated and weeded out? How is the bandage, which blindfolds the intellectual eye, to be removed, when the first article in every creed, the first dogma of every religion, is the absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of examination, and the abjuration of the right of private judgment? What step is truth to take in order to make herself known? If she offer herself with the credentials of demonstrative proof, pusillanimous man protests against his conscience, and refuses to admit its evidence (a 2.) If she appeal to divine authority, being already prepossessed to the contrary, he pleads a rival authority of a similar kind in favour of his own tenets, and treats all innovation as blasphemy. Thus man, by his determined blindness, rivets the chains of his captivity upon himself, and voluntarily barters away the freedom of his own reason, in order to become the sport of his own ignorance and passions, and to remain for ever prescinded from the power of remonstrance or resistance. To extricate the mind from