meets no resistance, as it does in the moral atmosphere of the lettered blockhead, whose words are but articulated air-sound, without sense; and whose powers of imagination have transferred to the memory, a repository of ancient ideas, which, if ever they were true, time and circumstances must have rendered false. Memory thus becomes a mere copy of absolute archetype, and judgment is so much overwhelmed, by the learned rubbish with which the mind is crammed, that it has neither room nor power to exert itself; and should the wisdom of others, by exposing the contents of this lumber room, offend the vanity, memory flies, as the substitute of judgment, to its aid, and with its usual weapons, impertinent syllogism and false conclusion, blinds the weak eyes of the ignorant, without casting the least shade over the bright sun of truth.

The unlearned peasant, if removed from the dusty neighborhood of the learned blockhead's agitated rubbish, would rub off from his eyes the attenuated film of natural ignorance, and contemplate in ecstacy, the glorious luminary of truth transcending the horizon of sense and conviction.

THE LOGIC OF NATURE.

WORDS are names, which by various combinations, transfer the conceptions of one mind to those of another. Abstract words, or those expressive of quality, can never be confined to a fixed and determined import, on account of the constant change of Nature, and the scholastic logic, by falling into the error of supposing the import of words to be fixed, has so bound the human faculties in syllogistical false conclusions, that whenever knowledge seems disposed to ripen into wisdom, or reflect in its course upon its centre or self, it is constantly propelled by logic, to preserve an outward form or centrifugal force.

For example; when the word good is made use of and

applied to man; if it is one in the state of enlightened Nature who speaks, he means by good, that man, whose nature is so benevolent, that he never attempts to force the will of his fellow creature, but assimilates it to his own by persuasion or argument; and that does not suf fer his tongue to belie his heart, by wittingly sacrificing truth to falsehood. If it is an artificially civilized being who speaks, he means by good, the man who is obedient to the laws and constitutions of society. In Spain, to put a man to death for daring to exercise the unalienable and sacred privilege of reason, is according to law, and therefore good. In France, where reason has more energy and religion less, to serve your friend, with the sacrifice of probity and patriotism, is called good: in England where the mind approaches nearest to intellectual existence, without having attained it, to sacrifice the rights of all mankind to the advantage of your country, is called good. An American savage may think it good to put his father to death; a Chinese his child; and a thousand more instances might be adduced, to prove that the meaning of words cannot be fixed in the present system of life, and that it is the erroneous supposition that they are so, that forms the only impediment to the progress of wisdom.

It is, however, in the power of strong intellectual faculties, notwithstanding this apparent imperfection of language, to communicate by words, most accurately, the whole of their conception, and this, by the circumlocution of definition and description; and this dialect having no other quality but intelligibility, could not fail to bring all mankind to one common standard of good, to the light of wisdom, or knowledge of self-to the practice of virtue, or true love of self-to the religion of self -to intellectual existence-and to a state of well-being or happiness, or a state of enlightened Nature.

The greatest evidence that might be brought to support the truth or utility of natural religion is, that no dialect or definitive terms can be understood, without it; for some universal standard must be invented, to give fixed

and positive import to words. Circumlocution or description might answer this end with minds in a state of intellectual existence, but in the colloquial intercourse with the mere animal mind of man, it will avail nothing. For supposing that a child of Nature, in a dialogue with a man of civilization in a state of animal existence, makes use of the word goodness, and defines it to be a quality incapable to commit violence, or force the will of self upon a sensitive fellow-creature; in a state of civilization, no such quality being known, it is plain that the present state of language, and every possible modification of terms, could never convey the same sentiments, when the words to express them mean black for white, and invert the ideas, so that it is impossible to ascertain or fix any dialectic or logic, but upon the basis of natural religion, where the import of words may be adjusted as accurately, as that of numbers; and the progress of the human kind, with such a medium for collecting and communicating its powers, must propel it to an acme of perfection, that surpasses all conception.

The syllogistical reasoning of metaphysical writers is an insult to common sense, and I never perused any of those "unanswerable conclusions" which many learned blockheads, dubbed philosophers, have avowed, without deploring the abased state of the human faculties, incapable of detecting the intelligibility of the terms, and the vanity, puerility and impertinence of the conclusions, divested of the common veil of ingenuity, with which all metaphysical authors abound; for metaphysics and absurdity are terms synonomous.

An intellectual mind admits of no demonstration and evidence, but what is drawn from the senses, and will not receive even as probability, what is not a close very and substantial deduction from them. The religion of Nature, which consists in [the knowledge of] the eternal. connection of self and Nature indissoluble by change of essence, as its foundation, is first demonstrated to the senses, by the perpetual transmutation, and indestructibility of matter, and probability points out by a close

and substantial inference, that I-essence-or that something, me-is connected with Nature as its integer, and all the powers of thought cannot conceive its cessation, which impresses such an almost intuitive idea of this incontrovertible and useful truth upon the mind, as elevates the existence of the intellectual man as much above the animal, as he is above the vegetable, and produces that state of enlightened Nature, which forms the acme of human essence.

MEDICINE OF NATURE.

THE first study of mankind is man, and it is the most abstruse and difficult of all others.

The intellectual properties of his combination are to be discovered by much solitude and contemplation; for the conversation of his own species promotes only the communication of ideas, formed under the bias and corruption of the will; for when two persons dispute or discuss, it is always to support and maintain their favorite conceptions; whereas, man, in self-conversation, feels no humility in changing or examining his own opinion, and judgment in this state, makes more progress towards truth in one minute, than in hours of conversation, either oral or scriptory. The advantage of conversation with others of his species, serves to extend his knowledge and ideas; but it is in conversation with self that judgment strengthens and improves, and it is by this habit of thoughtfulness, contemplation, and self-conversation, so remarkable in the English nation, that they have left the rest of the world centuries behind, in their progress towards intellectual existence, though they are still themselves at a great distance from that glorious acme of hu

man nature.

The mind, in habit of self and social conversation, resembles in its mode of labor, the industrious bee, that roams abroad to get its material, but makes all its honey at home. This habit must, in the end, conduct the mind

to a knowledge of self, or the intellectual part of its organization. This being done, the corporeal part will be easily explored.

The knowledge of anatomy, or the different parts of the body, and their union, may be learned by dissection, and a variety of accidental derangements or wounds remedied by the art of surgery; but there is another knowledge of the body, which no art can discover; that is, in the circulation of its fluids. The order or disorder of these, upon which depends the health of the body, can be known only by experimental sensations. The attention paid to these must be critical, and the inductions of Nature strictly observed and followed. When the body gives the first symptoms of disorder, the loss of appetite often follows, which indicates aliment to be noxious; but as life demands from reason, though not from corporeal sensation, some sustenance, judgment goes in search of what may be congenial to the present habit of body, and by cautious and guarded experiment, discovers the healthful diet.

The science of medicine, from one general rule of application to the infinite variety of human constitutions, has done more harm than good to mankind, and though its sudden operations may frequently delay the hand of death, yet it ever undermines the stamina of life, and few, if any of its votaries, but become victims, conducted insidiously to a premature tomb, through a painful and debilitated existence.

Medicament is studied by Nature in aliment alone, and this applied preventively, rather than sanatively. It is in the power of a man of wisdom, to discover by experience, what food is homogeneous, and what is heterogeneous to his constitution. The first promotes and perpetuates order, or the just operations of all the functions of life-the latter, in most cases, indicates the noxiousness of its quality, by an impediment in the functions, and where no derangement of the animal functions are discernible, we may then reason from the experience of Nature.