If ever book possessed paramount claims upon the intellects and feelings of the human family, as being identified with their freest exercise and fullest enjoyment, it is the work with which they are now presented. Its author, the Modern Pythagoras, travelled the globe, like his worthy prototype, not to gratify vanity, avarice, or luxury, but to study and advance humanity. For the accomplishment of his magnific project, he exerted a power of thought equally profound and sublime, a courage absolutely independent, the spirit of truth in its intrinsic radiance, and a beneficence pure and perfect, coextensive with all sensitive existence. This universal beneficence, the sum and substance of moral duty or virtue, he established on his favorite and fundamental proposition, That every sentient being ever has been, in portions, and in portions ever will be, a constituent part of its great integer, Nature, conscious of its present, but necessarily oblivious of its past, and ignorant of its future combined modes of existence.

The something termed mind, soul, spirit, intellect, is either itself a distinct, subtile agent, material or essentially analagous to matter; or else, it is an innate property of matter, at times latent, and at times under particular combinations, sensibly exhibited. This last hypothesis, (that sentience and intelligence are the result of matter's organization,) has been adopted by the author, who proves that the necessary immortality, now universally conceded to the physical properties and capacities of matter, is equally an attribute of its moral and intellectual powers and susceptibilities. But under the first theory, (that intellect itself is a divisible element,) its eternity is no less certain and perhaps more obvious; for Nature, by every fact and phenomenon, uniformly tends to demonstrate, and never to contradict, this fundamental truth. Sympathy and intelligence are as much immortal as gravity or cohesion. Man, collectively, is the moral ruler of the moral world, and moulds it to enjoyment or suffering.

This Bible of Nature, then, exhibits a stupendous scheme of PANTHEISM; not a contradiction, but a confirmation, of all that is good in existing morals, on every branch of which it abounds with original and lucid views. Assuming the subject of theology, where infidelity has abandoned it, it presents the long demanded and much desired substitute for orthodox faith. While completely substantiated by physical proofs, it is as consistent as any sectarian doctrine whatever with the scriptures, and therefore the only one true and tenable, being alone supported also by reason. It presents the golden mean, the great mediation between the deluded superstitionist, the dogmatic deist, and the chaotic atheist, who each can easily de

molish the other's systems, but never sustain their own. This view of Man's and Nature's eternal transmutations has been supported (as will hereafter be shown) by Ovid, Aurelius, Darwin, Palmer, R.Owen, St. Simon, Carlile, Strauss, and others. But who will profit by, who will adopt, this system? Who? the various sectaries and partizans, whose sincerity and exertions are now repaid with imposition and persecution; the fanatics or blind enthusiasts, who now vainly sacrifice time, labor, and substance, talent, feeling, and honesty, to their own delusions and others' deceptions, which as eagerly evade as Pantheism invites enquiry. The peculiar merits of the work entitle it to be universally perused, studied, and disseminated. Every man, woman, and child; every humane, every sensitive being that is or is to be, is vitally interested in its circulation. What Bacon, G. Fox, Locke, Wilkins, Newton, Howard, Paine, Jefferson, La Fayette, Clarkson, and Bentham were in their respective departments, or subsidiary spheres, that was our author in the grand orbit within which all their genius and energy is comprehended and concentrated, Universal Liberty, Virtue, and Happiness.

NATURE'S great Moral Laws lay hid in night,

Their sun, JOHN STEWART, Jose, and all was Light!

The MORAL STATE OF NATIONS appears to have been modelled after Howard's State of Prisons. The author with the wisest and noblest motives, explored on foot the different countries of the earth, in order, by conversation and actual observation, to judge for himself and instruct others in the study of mankind. It was first printed in the era of the French revolution, prolific in mighty minds and works; and though half a century has since elapsed, its applicability has increased with the progress of nations. The passages of a personal, local, or temporal application, are rare. If ancient and often partial and fabulous traditional history be interesting and useful, how supremely valuable must be the testimony of an enlightened cosmopolite, the faithful witness of the moral views he exhibits. Nearly all his observations on England are applicable to the northern United States of America, which possess, generally, similar origin, laws, customs, religion, language, &c. to Great Britain. His "Travels abounds, also, in those sterling, weighty truths, of which the work it introduces, the REVELATION OF NATURE, is wholly and orderly constituted, and which are interspersed in his "Opus Maximum," and "Lectures and Discourses," and, confirmed and matured by twenty-five years of experience and reflection, are repeated in his PHILOSOPHY OF GOOD SENSE or BOOK OF NATURE.

N

MORAL STATE

OF

NATIONS,

OR

TRAVELS

OVER THE

MOST INTERESTING PARTS OF THE GLOBE

TO DISCOVER THE

SOURCE OF MORAL MOTION;

COMMUNICATED

TO LEAD MANKIND THROUGH THE CONVICTION OF THE SENSES TO INTELLECTUAL EXISTENCE, AND

AN ENLIGHTENED STATE OF NATURE.

Speculative or Abstract Truth is a beacon on the shore of Life, to direct the tempest-tost vessel of Humanity in the storms of Error and Prejudice, to the haven of Happiness, Intellectual Existence, and an Enlightened state of Nature.

Practical Truth is the pilot Wisdom, who holds the helm, and directs the tacks, which impelled by the zephyr of Reform, obliquely approximates that beacon, and guards the vessel from the boisterous hurricanes of precipitate Innovation and Revolution, which propelling the vessel of Humanity in the face of the storm, wrecks it on the shoals of Error and Prejudice.

In the Year of Man retrospective Knowledge, by astronomical Calculation

5000.

[Year of the Common Era, 1790.]

Granville, Middletown, N. J. Reprinted by George H. Evans. 1840.