whose volition are uncontrolled by judgment, should annibilate all commerce, and cause a famine to destroy all their inhabitants; but he would labor at a perpetual and gradual relaxation thereof, which would approximate the end, total emancipation. But the vile spirit of ignorance and avarice declaius against all reform, as being dangerous both to slaves and masters; and the child of Nature is disposed to rejoice (even though self is submerged,) at the accumulated waters of evil, breaking down the dikes of despotism and ignorance, and overwhelming the oppressors and oppressed; as the eternal happiness of the eternal integer of Nature would be thereby promoted. This blind tyranny is the cause that all moral reforms have been brought about by a dreadful necessity, and procured through much misery and bloodshed, as the history of the different revolutions of nations attests.

INTELLECTUAL EXISTENCE.

THERE is no reflection that astonishes the mind so much as that which arises from considering man as not yet arrived at this period in the scale of existence. The proof may be drawn from the records of knowledge in history, and from conversation with the individuals of the present moment.

The operations of the human intellect in past ages have produced nothing but its external effects, and knowledge has been derived from the transposing and combining of the ideas of the memory; or, when exerting itself in observing the operations of its own passions, the mind has assumed the pompous title or nick-name of Philosophy for this act, because it bore a semblance to internal motion or reflection, though very distant from it.

The modes of the operations of the intellect and the passions which knowledge has taken cognizance of, and become acquainted with, and by that means obtained the. dignified title of philosophy, are as easy to be observed,

as the motions of outward bodies, and their cause and effect as easily known. They invented rules by which the moral machine man was to be directed in orbits of well-being or happiness, and these not being drawn from a central point of attraction, constantly met and swallowed up each other. No one has either had resolution or capacity to attempt the discovery of the centre, which is self. That part, independent of that partial identity of I, you, and they, which forms the integer of Nature, and which generalizes itself by sympathy with the whole, partaking of the immortality of Nature, and arising into the most perfect state which man is capable of, intellectual existence, composed of self knowledge and self love, comprehending all Nature.

Knowledge, as it has hitherto operated among mankind, could only lead them to reason relatively it had suborned the passions by a specious display of interest, and has served to perpetuate and establish ignorance and its consequence, vice. War with all its destruction, was declared a good, and violence, which includes the centre and circumference of all vice, was declared a virtue; and the whole art and effort of knowledge has been, and still continues to be, to separate self from its integer Nature. The universal intercourse of matter and of personal identity clearly demonstrates, that matter is constantly changing places from its two stages of animation and inanimation, and the former being in motion, can prepare happy identities or combinations for its successor, and the successor for the progenitor which in turn becomes the successor, and so on in this eternal revolution, from animation to animation; and this idea is the only one that can produce intellectual existence, or found virtue on a comprehensible and immovable basis.

TRUTH,

Is two-fold, physical and moral. Physical truth may be explained by bodies; thus, no two separate bodies can occupy the same space, and two bodies added to two bodies must make four bodies.

Of moral truths, I know but one that is absolute, viz: That the volition of man is to be restrained only until he has acquired judgment; for while the restraint of pa rents is consistent with truth, judgment must be absent in the child; and social coercion must be justified on the same principle.

While education, custom and policy, pervert and destroy, as they do by the present institutions, the judgments of mankind, coercion is necessary, and liberty must be sacrificed to the safety of existence.

The mind under the influence of moral truth or happiness, (for they are synonomous terms,) will abstract itself from all relative considerations of custom and policy in the investigation of this virtue, and will hold it up as a luminary, to direct relative or practical truth in its progress, or will scatter abroad its discoverics and reflections, and disseminate them as seed over the ground, which must take root and grow into practice as unaccountably and imperceptibly as the acorn becomes an oak.

Speculative writers, as well as readers, have constantly injured the cause of truth or happiness, by instituting or insisting upon its immediate practice. It would be as wise in the husbandman to demand the harvest immediately from the seed, or the tree from the plant.

The difference between theory and practice may be evinced by considering them with respect to the foregoing and only absolute moral truth, that the volition of man is to be restrained only by the judgment of him who forms it, in order to procure to the animal its well-being, which is a state of enlightened Nature.

Let us examine this important truth; first speculative ly.-Judgment, which by collecting ideas of the past, present and future, calculates the greatest probability of pain and pleasure, to be derived from the act of the animal, persuades the first volition to change or reform itself; and the ultimate volition is the best and most spontaneous, notwithstanding the apparent restraint of judgment; but if the extraneous power, political or parental government, forces man to act contrary to volition, the animal is deprived of free agency, and cannot possibly arrive at a state of well-being.

Let us now consider it practically.-If coercion or government of every kind should cease to execute this moral truth immediately, peremptorily and universally, no doubt great evil and confusion would arise; because, were the government of force to abdicate its throne before judgment became of age, the inter-regnum of such a minority would be dreadful, and therefore it has ever been the study of that part of mankind, who have usurped a power over their fellow-creatures, to form an alliance with another set of usurpers, called priests, in order to perpetuate, by means of false and trivial instruction, the minority of judgment, as they knew that if it became of age, it would compel tyranny and ignorance to abdicate the throne of reason.

The minds of weak men are always alarmed at the junction of practical with speculative truth, because they view it in the effect of immediate instead of mediate adoption, and view the gradual relaxation or change of the iron chain of society into the silken bonds of love and reason, as a dissolution of moral existence.

Let us imagine the establishment of this speculative truth in practice, and consider if it could be done without giving society any injurious shock.

The operation would begin by disseminating knowledge among the people; from this act no shock or injury can be apprehended; knowledge, by being generally cultivated, would produce wisdom-wisdom would give energy to the will, and this being universal, would prevent

all concussion, or injurious shock, but would claim the privilege of partaking in the legislation of its own society. Society thus extended and tempered with the collective wisdom of a great nation, would check the fury of the passions, ambition, avarice and luxury, and substitute the affection of love, justice and temperance in their place; and the frequent operations of collective wisdom would bring man, in a short period, to the happy state of enlightened Nature.

Physical truth, which is the type of moral truth, is alone manifested to mankind.

Moral truth, being viewed through the medium of custom and education by men, appears to them under different shapes, and all attempts to change the medium are restrained by political and religious inquisition; and the individual, who by reading things, and not words, in the volume of Nature, in travelling over the face of the globe, rarifies the thick medium of custom, appears a dangerous Colossus to puny creatures of prejudice, and being dreaded by vanity is depicted as an enemy to society, while he is a real friend to all Nature.

The dark and rooted prejudice of mankind nas SO contracted the standard of judgment, that an animal man and an intellectual, in their intercourse, differ as much as does the astronomer from the carpenter who resembles the animal man, by pulling out his foot-measure to determine the distance of the heavenly bodies, which the former has calculated.

To illustrate this :-let a child of Nature, the standard of whose reason is the diameter of the circle of all Nature, discourse with a Spaniard, and arraign the sacrilegious institutions of the inquisition, for causing abortion of the most sacred germ of Nature, human thought, in order to prevent man from arriving at intellectual existence, or an enlightened state of Nature. The Spaniard will with his standard of custom, reply that the inhabitants of his country, being exceedingly addicted to superstition and furious zeal, if thought was permitted to be exercised and divulged, it would introduce heresy, and