kid and the timid sheep; they tamed the patient camel, the furious bull, and the impetuous horse; and, congratulating themselves on the success of their confederate industry, they sat down in the joy of their own hearts, and began to taste the comforts of repose and uniform tranquillity; and thus love of self, the great cause of all their reasoning, became the institutor and founder of every art and every enjoyment.

At this period of human society, when men could pass their days in more perfect ease and leisure, and in the communication and comparison of their ideas, gradual curiosity and reflection led them to extend their thoughts and researches into both terrestrial and celestial objects, and into the nature of those things which seemed connected with their own existence. They observed the course of the seasons, the action of the elements, and the properties of fruits and plants; and, by this means, endeavoured to multiply the number of their enjoyments. Remarking, in certain districts, that particular seeds contained a very wholesome substance in a small bulk, easy to be transported and preserved, and possessed of the faculty of reproducing the parent plant, they determined to imitate this process of Nature; and therefore, with that view, committed to the earth barley, wheat, and rice; and the produce afterwards abundantly answered their expectation. Thus, they found the means of obtaining within a small extent, and without the necessity of perpetually changing their situa

tion, a plentiful and durable stock of provision; and, encouraged by this discovery, they prepared for themselves fixed habitations, and progressively constructed houses, villages and towns; and at length assumed the form of communities and of nations; and hence it was, that love of self became the radical source of every thing that genius has developed, or human power effected.

By the sole aid then of his faculties has man been able to meliorate his situation, and to raise himself to the exalted and astonishing proficiency of his present condition. Happy, too happy would have been his lot, had he scrupulously observed the law imprinted on his nature, and as scrupulously fulfilled the great object of it! But, alas! by the baneful indiscretions of his conduct, at one time overlooking, at another overstepping its limits, he has ultimately involved himself in an endless labyrinth of errors and misfortunes, from which he is completely at a loss how to extricate himself: and, thus love of self, one while deranged by the intemperate sallies of its own extravagance, at another grown blind and paralytic by virtue of its own inert and listless insensibility, has eventually introduced a train of calamities among mankind, whose number and direful consequences baffle all the arithmetic of human imagination to calculate.

CHAP. VIII.

SOURCE OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.

In fact, scarcely had the faculties of men began to expand themselves, than, carried away by the attraction of objects which invite and flatter the senses, they gave themselves up to the full scope of their unbridled desires. The quantity of pleasurable sensations, which Nature had annexed to the gratification of their real corporeal wants in order to connect and link them with their existence, no longer sufficed: not centented with the blessings which the earth afforded them, or which their own industry produced, they were desirous of monopolizing and treasuring up a stock of enjoyments for themselves, and therefore grew covetously enamoured of those which their fellow-creatures possessed. Hence a strong man fell upon his weaker neighbour, in order to wrest from him the profit of his labour: and the weaker man solicited the succour of another weak person like himself with the view of repelling this violent encroachment. The strong man, again, in his turn, associated himself with another strong man, and they said to each other, "Why should we fatigue our limbs and our bodies in the acquisition of enjoyments, which we find already prepared for us in the hands of the feeble, who are unable to defend themselves against our superior strength? Let us at once unite and plunder them. We can thus oblige them to labour

and toil for us, and we shall enjoy, without any trouble on our parts, the whole fruit of their exertions." Hence the strong, associating on the one side, for the purpose of oppression, and the weak for resistance on the other, people began reciprocally to torment each other, and a fatal and general discord became finally established upon the earth, in which the passions successively sprouting forth under thousands of new forms, have been in an incessant state of generation, and continually adding fresh links to the chain of human calamities.

Thus, that very love of self, which, when duly restrained within the limits of moderation and prudence, was a source of extensive improvement and felicity, in its blind and disordered state, degenerated into a deleterious poison: so that Covetousness, the child and companion of ignorance, has, in consequence, been made the productive cause of all the mischiefs that have desolated the earth.

Yes, Ignorance and exuberant desire, ye are the twin agents, that have forged all the plagues which infest the life of man! It is you, who have inspired him with false ideas of happiness, and prompted him to misconstrue and infringe the laws of nature in the relative connection betwixt himself and exterior objects! Through you, his conduct has been injurious to his own existence, and he has thereby violated the duty he individually owes to himself as a moral being. It is you, that have steeled his heart against compassion, and his mind against the dictates of equitable justice;

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in consequence of which he has oppressed and afflicted his fellow-beings, and thereby violated the duty he owes, in a social view, to other moral beings like himself. By ignorance and inordinate desire, man has armed himself against man, family against family, tribe against tribe, and the earth been converted into a bloody theatre of discord, cabal, and robbery. It is these, that have sown the seeds of a clandestine war in the actual bosom of every state by drawing a line of distinction betwixt one citizen and another, and thus splitting the same society of men into oppressors and oppressed, masters and slaves. Under the influence of these, the heads of particular nations, have, either by recourse to open violence, turned the arms of the community against itself, and built upon mercenary ambition the fabric of political despotism: Or else, by force of shrewd hypocrisy and finesse, have imposed, under the assumed title of the vicegerents of heaven, lying mandates, and a sacrilegious yoke; thus rendering_rapaciousness and credulity the fundamental principles of religious despotism. Hence they have eventually corrupted every idea of good and evil, justice and injustice, virtue and vice: and nations have in consequence become involved in the intricacy of a most deplorable labyrinth of errors and calamities!.... Such are your works, ye friends of fell desire and greedy ignorance! such are the malevolent demons that have laid waste the earth; such are the decrees of fate, that have overturned empires; such are the celestial maledictions