THE UNI VERSE

Of man in the abstract. That we can judge only with regard to our own System, being ignorant of the relations of Systems and things. That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suitcd to bis place and rank in the création, agreeable to the gênerai order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future évente, and partly upon the hope of a future state, that ail his happiness in the présent dépends. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of his dispensations. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the création, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural. The unreasonableness of his complainte against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree, would render him misérable. That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of créature to créature, and of ail créatures to man. The gradations of sensé, instinct, thought, reflection, reason: that reason alone countervails ail the other faculties.

ARGUMENT