VII. deficiencies and weaknesses, or even worse propen- LETTER sities, with which, every thing that is better within us, is too much and too often allied. This is a subject deeply interesting to us all, and fit to exercise the mind of the profoundest philosopher. It is also a study which will carry with it its own reward; for while it represses pride and self-conceit, the brighter elements will exhilarate us by the prospect of the improvements to which they elevate our thoughts, and towards which we may with due care be advancing. They will, if remembered, be always tending to excite an ambition to be divested of the deteriorations, which, tho so universal, are never immoveable; and which we are continually exhorted to diminish. We have no diseases or blemishes in the immortal principle of our nature, which may not be healed and dissipated. Reason and self-love concur with religion, to invite us to make this honorable result, the constant object of our desire and efforts. We are called upon by the highest Authority to be ever striving to do so; and we therefore know that it is practicable. For it is not likely that He who said, 'Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect,' would have so solemnly urged us to such views and exertions, unless the aspiration had been rational; nor unless a progressive melioration would have accompanied the persevering endeavour. This reflection may satisfy us, that the ulterior consummation is never beyond the possibility of some future realization. But the perfection of human nature seems not to arise from the soul alone. The form of creation designed for man was, that this soul should be invested always with a material body; with that species of VII. LETTER corporeal form in this world, with which it has always. been accompanied in every species of the human population, and with a superior form of it in its future state. Our present body has been a constant and uniform structure thro all ages and in all nations, varying in some parts in the color of the external skin, and in its size; but every where the same in the system, laws and substance of its composition. But this universal body is not to be considered as some have regarded it, as an incumbrance, as an evil, as a degradation, a deterioration, or an imprisonment. Such declamation implies only an inattention to its uses and offices. It is an essential part of our appointed nature here, and contributes and acts indispensably to make us what we are. And a similar accompaniment is to be with our individuality hereafter. We could not be of that order of beings that we are, nor of those persons and qualities which we now possess, without it. It is in every respect necessary and beneficial, and never becomes otherwise by its own natural operation, nor without compulsion, from other causes and agencies exterior to it, and made to act forcibly and injuriously upon it. 8 • Plato makes Socrates speak in this light of the body: When the soul seeks to explore truth with the body, it is manifestly deceived by it. It reasons then most beautifully when this does not disturb it. Does not then the soul of the philosopher despise his body and fly from it, and seek to be itself by itself? Will not true philosophers say, that as long as we have a body our mind will be mind with evil attached to it? For the body produces myriads of impediments to us from the food it needs and the disorders which fall upon us. It obstructs us with loves and desires, and fears and idols of every sort, and so fills us with trifles, that we may truly say, it never permits us to be rightly wise. Nothing else occasions wars and seditions and strifes so much as the body and its appetites.' Plato, Phæd. c. xviii. p. 88. VII. In its proper, created and uninjured state, it is always LETTER doing us services, giving us gratifications, producing and guarding our daily comfort, and the ever ready instrument of all our motions and manual abilities. Other things, by deranging and diseasing its admirable functions and organizations, may cause pain to arise from them, but this never originates from itself in its own unperverted condition and construction. It is the body which principally makes us the specific beings that we are; without it, and anterior to being invested with it, the soul is but a general intellectual faculty, that, for aught we know, might as well have been any other kind of living being as Man. If this had been incorporated with the fleshly mechanism of a bird, it would have been the monarch of the feathered race, but could not have been a human being. So, if it had been connected with the forms appropriated to angels, if they have any kind of material figures, it might then have been a portion of the angelic classes of existence. But it was intended and appointed by the Creator to be neither brute nor seraph, but a human being; and in order that it might be such, that specific form and interior composition, and those peculiar organizations, adapted to make it so, have been devised and provided for it. And thus the general powers and faculties of our living and thinking principle are trained and modified by our body into that special mind and character, qualities and habits, which every where constitute human nature; tho with many partial and distinguishing varieties, from the local, social and political circumstances with which they are connected. But to effectuate the purpose of causing Man to VII. LETTER be a human being such as we are, it was not alone sufficient to give him the human frame which we inherit and bear, it was also requisite to invent and compose such an external world as environs us, for such embodied souls to inhabit; because our becoming human beings depends as much upon the action of other things upon our senses and feelings, as upon the nervous organizations and muscular mobilities, by which we become perceptive of sensations from them. The external world and course of things, which it has pleased our Creator to imagine and to ordain for our accommodation and instruction, have been the main subjects of our preceding Letters. In them we attempted to present a panoramic view of the starry system, and of the vegetable and animal kingdoms which adorn our globe, and are so serviceable to us, with some general outlines of our geological structure. It was remarked, that from these creations all our science and all our knowlege have been derived, and that we possess no other, nor can acquire any ideas of any sort but what are derived from them, and from the operations of the human mind upon them, as far as visible nature can supply or suggest our intellectual materials. But it is obvious that every thing about us displays artificial invention and composition. Nothing that consists of elementary particles, either casually or arbitrarily united, can have been in that state from all eternity. But as there can be no chance in creation, all that exists, must be in a regular arrangement, and be a succession of produced and appointed sequences. All the substances we see, therefore display to us the will, the choice, and the reasoning of their Great VII. Author. We must keep the fact continually in our LETTER recollection, on account of its unceasing applicability, that He has devised and selected them to be what they are, and as they are, in preference to their being of any other kind or configuration. The same particles might have been arranged into very different forms and substances, with very different results to us, if He had thought fit. But He has determined that they should be what we always find them, in order that His human beings may be what they are; and meaning that mankind should, as long as they exist and reappear on earth, be always of the same general nature, He has caused His external world to be hitherto as abiding and as permanent in all its forms and classes of being, as the human soul itself is. The natural forms and course of things which now surround us, have never varied in the substance and principles of their make and system. What is deciduous and subjected to death in the organized classes, reappears in its offspring with the same nature and character. The reproductive system has been so wonderfully contrived as to perpetuate a succession of continual similarities, so that death or dissolution makes no fracture or chasm in the great whole of creation. Man, and the world he inhabits, continue in their settled course. The human senses of every generation have always the same external world before them. This exterior uniformity thus constantly preserved, amid all the mortality and destruction of living things, produces and ensures the continual uniformity of human nature, in all its essential characters and phenomena. If nature had been made to change in its general system and substance at appointed periods, the human being would have |