with that field in which they are exercised. If this being passes through different states, or fields of action, and we find a succession of powers adapted to the different periods of his progress, we conclude that he was destined for those successive states, and reckon his nature progressive. If, besides the immediate set of powers which fit him for action in his present state, we observe another set which appear superfluous if he were to be confined to it, and which point to another or higher one, we naturally conclude, that he is not designed to remain in his present state, but to advance to that for which those supernumerary powers are adapted. Thus we argue, that the fetus, which has wings forming or formed, and all the apparatus proper for flight, is not destined always to creep on the ground, or to continue in the torpid state of adhering to a wall, but is destined in its season to take its flight in air. Without this farther definition, the admirable mechanism of wings and the other apparatus would be useless and absurd. The same kind of reasoning may be applied to man, while he lives only a sort of vegetative life in the womb. He is furnished even there with a beautiful apparatus of organs, eyes, ears, and other delicate senses; which receive nourishment indeed, but are in a manner folded up, and have no proper exercise or use in their present confinement*. Let us suppose some intelligent spectator, who never had any connexion with man, nor the least acquaintance with human affairs, to see this odd phenomenon, a creature formed after such a manner, and placed in a situation apparently unsuitable to such various machinery: must he not be strangely puzzled about the use of his complicated structure, and reckon such a profusion of art and admirable workmanship lost on the subject? or reason by way of anticipation, that a creature endowed with such various yet unexerted capacities, was destined for a more enlarged sphere of action, in which those latent capacities shall have full play? The vast variety and yet beautiful symmetry and proportions of the several parts and organs with which the creature is endowed, and their apt cohesion with, and dependence on, the curious receptacle of their life and nourishment, would forbid his concluding the whole to be the birth of chance, or the bungling effort of an unskilful artist; at least would make him demur a while at so harsh a sentence. But if, while he is in this state of uncertainty, we suppose him to see the babe, after a few successful struggles, throwing off his fetters, breaking loose from his little dark prison, and emerging into open day, then unfolding his recluse and dormant powers, breathing in air, gazing at light, admiring colours, sounds, and all the fair variety of nature, immediately his doubts clear up, the propriety and excellency of the workmanship dawn upon him with full lustre, and the whole mystery of the first period is unravelled by the opening of this new scene. Though in this second period the creature lives chiefly a kind of animal life, i.e. of sense and appetite, yet by various trials and observations he gains experience, and by the gradual evolution of the powers of imagination he ripens space for a higher life, for exercising the arts of design and imitation, and of those in which strength or dexterity are more requisite than acuteness or reach of judgement. In the succeeding rational or intellectual period, his understanding, which formerly crept in a lower, mounts into a higher sphere, canvasses the natures, judges of the relations of things, forms schemes, deduces consequences from what is past, and from present as well as past collects future events. By this succession of states, and of correspondent culture, he grows up at length into a moral, a social, and a political creature. This is the last period at which we perceive him to arrive in this his mortal career. Each period is introductory to the next succeeding one; each life is a field of exercise and improvement for the next higher one; the life of the fetus for that of the infant, the life of the infant for that of the child, and all the lower for the highest and best.—But is this the last period of nature's progression? Is this the utmost extent of her Butler's plot, where she winds up the drama, and dismisses the actor into eternal oblivion? Or does he appear to be invested with supernumerary powers, which have not full exercise and scope even in the last scene, and reach not that maturity or perfection of which they are capable; and therefore point to some higher scene where he is to sustain another and more important character than he has yet sustained? If any such there are, may we not conclude by analogy, or in the same way of anticipation as before, that he is destined for that after part, and is to be produced upon a more august and solemn stage, where his sublimer powers shall have proportioned action, and his nature attain its completion.

If we attend to that curiosity, or prodigious thirst of Powers in knowledge, which is natural to the mind in every person which riod of its progress, and consider withal the endless pain to a round of business and care, and the various hardships to after-life, which the bulk of mankind are chained down; it is Intellect-evident, that in this present state it is impossible to ex-tual-pect the gratification of an appetite at once so infatiable and so noble. Our senses, the ordinary organs by which knowledge is let into the mind, are always imperfect, and often fallacious; the advantages of afflicting or correcting them are possessed by few; the difficulties of finding out truth amidst the various and contradictory opinions, interests, and passions of mankind, are many; and the wants of the creature, and of those with whom he is connected, numerous and urgent: so that it may be said of most men, that their intellectual organs are as much shut up and secluded from proper nourishment and exercise in that little circle to which they are confined, as the bodily organs are in the womb. Nay, those who to an aspiring genius have added all the affinities of art, leisure, and the most liberal education, what narrow prospects can even they take of this unbounded scene of things from that little eminence on which they stand? and how eagerly do they still grasp at new discoveries, without any satisfaction or limit to their ambition?

But should it be said, that man is made for action, Moral and not for speculation, or fruitless searches after knowledge, we ask, For what kind of action? Is it only for bodily exercises, or for moral, political, and religious ones? Of all these he is capable; yet, by the unavoidable circumstances of his lot, he is tied down to the former, and has hardly any leisure to think of the latter; or, if he has, wants the proper instrument of exerting them. The love of virtue, of one's friends and country, the generous sympathy with mankind, and heroic zeal of doing good, which are all so natural to great and good