There are nations and individuals in the world, the vivacity of whose conduct recommends a life of dissipation or unmodified pleasure, as the impulse of their passions seem to drive them, without a vacuum through life; and these are the French and the Irish.

Women, the object and source of pleasure, are fond of these characters, not as they are apt to flatter themselves, for their superior personal prowess, but because their minds being merely animal, dictate and maintain a conversation and intercourse, that consoles the weaker sex for their debasement when in intercourse with intellectual minds of men. Such individuals are mere animals, without consciousness as without thought, and seem formed to pass through life like the brutes, without a knowledge of their existence.

The debased state of intellect in women is caused and perpetuated by the tyranny of men, who force them to a state of ignorance, and then claim a right to command and control them; there is, however, a quantity of life and latent intellect in their constitution, which, when truth shall be divested of all clouds of sophistry, and the ingenious invention of men, they will see, and embrace it before man, as they possess one of the greatest human attributes, sympathy, in a very superior degree to man; and the other attribute, probity, a very small proportion of wisdom would procure; and until women are enabled by a proper education to cultivate their talent or power of intellect, and by custom to assume their equality with man, it will be impossible to bring the chaos of the moral world into any order or system.

The great enemy of wisdom is that absurd dogma, that truth is dangerous to be taught the vulgar, and ignorance is cultivated in order to procure an apology for error; and the most infamous blasphemy against humanity and Nature, is propagated by this detestable aphorism.

The cause of motion has been accurately personified, under the name of God, with various attributes to form an image of terror, which might force submission to cr ror; but the imagination has, through its own folly, de

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feated that purpose, and it is not fear that produces the whole effect, but the subject being of much intricacy and importance, occupies the thoughts, and prevents their comprehending the proper object, man himself.

If metaphysical doctrines had not been invented, and the occupation of the human mind entirely taken up with their investigation, the arts and sciences, carried to the highest degree of perfection, would not have furnished aliment enough for the voracious appetite of the human intellect, and the knowledge of self, or theory of the moral system, would ages ago have been discovered and reduced to practice.

What effect has this fear or terror of God upon man, when through a life of ignorance he violates the system of Nature, and brings misery upon self as its centre? One tear dropped upon the bed of dissolution appeases the anger of his imaginary deity. But what is the effect of this terror upon nations? These when they agitate with the dreadful concussion of war, the holy chain of the sympathy of Nature, they call it an appeal to God, and make the phantom of their imagination an apology for cruelty and destruction. The fact is, that nations have long since emancipated collectively the human mind from all metaphisical absurdities; and if they treat of them, it is only to throw a tub to the whale; to divert the attention of the vulgar from the miseries, which the vice and ignorance of the great and rich bring upon them by subjugating them to institutions, calculated to enslave and oppress them.

Under all the various forms in which human institutions have organized nations, the poor have been ever left a prey to the rich; who, in proportion to the sympathy they possess, have rendered them happy or miserable. Laws, if properly established, would no doubt procure them relief; but the rich, who make the laws, wish for no alteration; and nothing but extreme necessity, brought about by insurrection, can compel the rich to such an operation.

The rich man in possession of abundance, is enabled

to make a hard bargain with the poor man, whose contract for labor, on which his life depends, will admit of no delay, and therefore he is obliged to work upon terms dictated by the rich, influenced only by the humanity or cruelty of his will.

O England, thou nation of humanity and intellect! I have travelled over the greatest part of the world, and have seen in most countries, the laborious order of aniinal matter, whether man or brute, in a state of equipoise between inanition and existence, owing to the insensibility and avarice of the rich, but in thy happy island, the peasant and his horse, though their labor is excessive, yet have all the strength and comfort which aliment can give; and intellect rewards the humanity of the rich by an increase of their revenue.

What incredible dupes are men to the passion of avarice, which drinks the blood of the animals, from whose labor its treasures are drawn, to save the expence of water.

Lest my irretentive memory should impose repetition for new matter upon the patience of my readers, I shall sum up the spirit of the matter contained in this work in the following concise and comprehensive aphorisms, which I recommend to the self-contemplation of my readers, as the only means to detect the truth or falsehood thereof; vanity in personal conversation, as well as in public polemical discussion, being an insurmountable obstacle to all impartial investigation.

The operation of the intellectual faculties, as the only intelligent cause of moral motion, is to be venerated, and its communication held sacred in the plenitude of liberty.

The end of all association is to assure the execution of the defensive volition of man, and to restrain the offensive, as the causes of happiness and misery.

Matter is indestructible and eternal, revolving through various combinations, animate and inanimate, which are its accidents to convey to it pain, pleasure, and consciousness of existence.

Animate matter, in possession of volition, or the direction of moral motion, forms happy identities or stages, to receive inanimate matter in time present and future.

All matter is in an incessant state of inter-revolution, which is proved by aliment, respiration, and perspiration, Identity or essence, being but the accident of matter in combination, holds its eternal connection with Nature through the medium of indestructible matter.

The beings, I, you, and they, though their specific combination of identity and matter separate, are eternal through their primary and indissoluble connection with Nature, and the good and evil which our volition brings to the present system will be perpetuated to the future renovation of that connection.

Recommending the consideration of these important aphorisms to the self-contemplation of my readers, and the result of these to public communication, I conclude these speculations, and hope that the virtuous intention of reducing the moral chaos to system, by proving the universal connection of self and Nature, will apologise for this apparent dogmatical boldness, and conciliate the temper of the civilian, the learned, and the religionist, whom sensitive Nature with the agonizing groans and lamentations of misery, which error inflicts upon her, imprecates, to operate with the whole power of human intellect, emancipated from the tyranny of prejudice, to relieve it from its universally wretched predicament.

INVOCATION TO SELF.

LET the effulgence of thy glorious essence open in gleams, and not in the fulness of its splendor, upon my intellect, lest it be confounded or destroyed. The glimmering of thy majesty, which waned in the "Revelation of Nature," elevated the faculty of thought beyond the power of speech, which broke out in faultering expressions. But this approach to thy sacred presence, overwhelms my essence, and thought becomes as inadequate to conception, as speech was before to thought. Oh! aid me to contemplate so much of thy glimmering light, as the essence of man is capable of, and to conform into thought and expression such a proportion, as being communicated, may furnish utility to existence.

O SELF! component part of thy great integer, NaTURE-incomprehensible in thy cause and essence-comprehensible in thy ever-changing modes of existencecomprehensible in thy eternal connection with Nature, which all the powers of thought cannot separate-comprehensible motion in the volition of man-comprehensible in thought, the guide and guardian of that volition, to direct man to happiness, or to procure well-being to matter in its eternal revolution-comprehensible in sympathy, which unites the various links of beings in the great chain of Nature.

Arise in the mind of man in all the ardor of thy splendor-dissipate the clouds of credulity-show him, that faith, which is not founded on the conviction of the senses, is folly, thy most dangerous enemy, which through so many ages of ignorance has induced mankind to mistrust thy only representative, reason, and to sacrifice happiness by rebellion against thy beneficent sovereignty.

Inspire him with an high estimation of life or intellectual existence; the happiest period in the eternal revolution of matter, which may have revolved his connection