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future reasoning by their perpetual intrusions; as those habits of muscular actions of the face or limbs, which are called tricks, when contracted in infancy continue to the end of our lives.

A third great source of error is the vivacity of our ideas of imaginations, which perpetually intrude themselves by various associations, and compose the farrago of our dreams; in which, by the suspension of volition, we are precluded from comparing the ideas of one sense with those of another, or the incongruity of their successions with the usual course of nature, and thus to detect their fallacy. Which we do in our waking hours by a perpetual voluntary exertion, a process of the mind above mentioned, which we have termed intuitive analogy.

This analogy presupposes an acquired knowledge of things, hence children and ignorant people are the most credulous, as not possessing much knowledge of the usual course of Nature; and secondly, those are most_credulous, whose faculty of comparing ideas, or the voluntary exertion of it, is slow or imperfect. Thus if the power of the magnetic needle of turning towards the north, or the shock given by touching both sides of an electrized coated jar, was related for the first time to a philosopher, and to an ignorant person; the former would be less ready to believe them than the latter; as he would find nothing similar in Nature to compare them to, he would again and again repeat the experiment, before he would give it his entire credence; till by these repetitions it would cease to be a single fact, and would therefore gain the evidence of analogy. But the latter, as having less knowledge of Nature, and less facility of voluntary exertion, would more readily believe the assertions of others, or a single fact, as presented to his own observation. Of this kind are the bulk of mankind; they continue throughout their lives in a state of childhood, and have thus been the dupes of priests and politicians in all countries and in all ages of the world.

In regard to religious matters, there is an intellectual cowardice instilled into the minds of the people from their infancy; which prevents their inquiry; credulity is made an indispensable virtue; to inquire or exert their reason

in religious matters is denounced as sinful; and in the catholic church is punished with more severe penances than moral crimes. But in respect to our belief of the supposed medical facts, which are published by variety of authors; many of whom are ignorant, and therefore credulous; the golden rule of David Hume may be applied with great advantage. "When two miraculous assertions oppose each other, believe the less miraculous."

The method of cure is, to increase our knowledge of the laws of Nature, and our habit of comparing whatever ideas are present to us with those known laws, and thus to counteract the fallacies of our senses, to emancipate ourselves from the false impressions, which we have imbided in our infancy, and to set the faculty of reason above that of imagination.

Some philosophers have believed, that the acquisition of knowledge diminishes the happiness of the possessor. But as the foresight and power of mankind, are much increased by their voluntary exertions in the acquirement of knowledge, they may undoubtedly avoid many sources of evil, and procure many sources of good, and yet possess the pleasures of sense or of imagination as extensively as the brute or the savage.

The greater production of food by agriculture than by pasturage, shows that a nation nourished by animal food will be less numerous than if nourished by vegetable ; and the former will therefore be liable, if they are engaged in war, to be conquered by the latter, as Abel was slain by Cain. This is perhaps the only valid argument against inclosing open arable fields. The great production of human nourishment by agriculture and pasturage evinces the advantage of society over the savage state; as the number of mankind becomes increased a thousand fold by the arts of agriculture and pasturage; and their happiness is probably under good governments improved in as great a proportion, as they become liberated from the hourly fear of beasts of prey, from the daily fear of famine, and of the occasional incursions of their cannibal neighbors.

But pasturage cannot exist without property both in the soil, and the herds which it nurtures; and for the invention of arts, and production of tools necessary to agriculture, some must think, and others labor; and as the efforts of some will be crowned with greater success than that of others, an inequality of the ranks of society must succeed; but this inequality of mankind in the present state of the world is too great for the purposes of producing the greatest quantity of human nourishment, and the greatest sum of human happiness; there should be no slavery at one end of the chain of society, and no despotism at the other. By the future improvements of human reason such governments may possibly hereafter be established, as may a hundred-fold increase the number of mankind, and a thousand-fold their happiness.

Such is however, the coudition of mortality, that the first law of nature is, "Eat or be eaten." We cannot long exist without the destruction of other animal or vegetable beings, either in their mature or their embryon state, unless the fruits which surround the seeds of some vegetables, or the honey stolen from them by the bee, may be said to be an exception to this assertion. Hence from the necessity of our nature, we may be supposed to have a right to kill those creatures which we want to eat, or which want to eat us. But to destroy even insects wantonly shows an unreflecting mind or an unfeeling heart.

Nevertheless, mankind may well be divided into the selfish and the social; that is, into those whose pleasures arise from gratifying their appetites, and those whose pleasures arise from their sympathising with others. And according to the prevalence of these opposing propensities, we value or dislike the possessor of them.

In conducting the education of young people, it is a nice matter to inspire them with so much benevolent sympathy or compassion, as may render them good and amiable, and yet not so much as to make them unhappy at the sight of incurable distress. We should endeavor to make them alive to sympathize with all remediable evil, and at the same time to arm them with fortitude to bear the sight of such irremediable evils, as the accidents of life must frequently present before their eyes.

Our sympathy with the pleasures and pains of others, distinguishes men from other animals; and is probably the foundation of what is termed our moral sense; and the source of all our virtues. When our sympathy with those miseries of mankind, which we cannot alleviate, rises to excess, the mind becomes its own tormentor; and we add to the aggregate sum of human misery, which we ought to labor to diminish.

The effect of this powerful agent, Imitation, in the moral world, is the foundation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains and pleasures of others, and is in consequence, the source of all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the miseries, or with the joys of our fellow-creatures, but in an involuntary excitation of ideas, in some measure similar or imitative of those which we believe to exist in the minds of the persons whom we commiserate or congratulate.

FROM DARWIN'S PHYTOLOGIA

All organized nature may be divided into stationary organization, and locomotive organizations; the former of which are called vegetables, and the latter animals. All those parts of vegetables, which are most nutritious to animals, consist, as observed above, of aliment secreted from the vegetable blood, and laid up in reservoirs for the future sustenance of their embryon or infant progeny; which reservoirs are plundered by locomotive animals, and devoured along with the progeny, they were designed to support! add to this, that the stronger locomotive animals devour the weaker ones without mercy. Such is the condition of organic nature; whose first law might be expressed in the words, "Eat or be Eaten!" and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!

1. Where shall we find a benevolent idea to console us amid so much apparent misery?—I hope the sympathizing reader will not think the following account of the happiness, which organized beings acquire from irritation only, impertinently inserted in this place; their happiness derived from imagination and volition may be treated of in some future work.

It may first be observed, that the seeds of plants and the eggs of animals, when they have left the pericarp or uterus, and have not yet commenced their new growth upon the soil, or beneath the wings of the mother, exist in a torpid state, not possessed of sensitive life; and cannot therefore at this time be supposed to suffer pain, when they are destroyed by other animals; though those animals obtain pleasure from the activity, into which their vascular systems are excited by the stimulus of the aliment thus supplied.

Secondly, that the young of lactescent animals both acquire and communicate pleasure to the enamoured mother, from whom they receive their nutriment, as mentioned in Botanic Garden, which constitutes the most beautiful and most benevolent part of the great system of Nature.

Thirdly, all animals, and, I suppose, vegetables, receive pleasure in the reproduction of their species; and where seeds are dispersed on the soil, and the eggs of some animals and of many insects are buried beneath it, to be revived and hatched by the warmth of the sun; there can be no pain in these cases inflicted on the mother, when they are destroyed by animals or by insects, as she is unconscious of their destruction.

Fourthly, as all animal existence must perish in process of time, by the inirritability and consequent debility occasioned by the repetition of stimulus, which is termed habit, and appears to be an universal law of nature; it is so ordered, that as soon as any organized being becomes less irritable and less sensible, and in consequence feeble or sickly, that it is destroyed and eaten by other more irritable and more sensible, and in consequence more vigor. ous organized beings; as insects attack the weaker vege table productions in preference to the healthy ones; and beasts of prey more easily catch and conquer the aged and infirm, and the young ones are defended by their parents. By this contrivance more pleasurable sensation exists in the world, as the organized matter is taken from a state of less irritability and less sensibility, and converted into a state of greater; that is, in other words, that the old organization, whether stationary or locomotive ones, are transmigrated into young ones: whence it happened, that

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