412 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESSS OF HUMAN REASON. But I would not interrupt thecourse of our dialogue with too many objections, nor divert the current and tendency of it, from its main end and design ; and therefore I let this pass for the present. Tellme then, Sir, with a sincere heart, can you imagine that ever a single creature in thewilds of Africa, and the American forests, could arise to this degree of reason, and to these fine inferences and deductions of the rules of morality, by the dint of his own understanding ? The poor wretch that has been trained up from his infancy merely to fish and hunt, to plant alittle Indian corn, and to parch it by the fire or the sun, to tie a skin round his body to keep him from the cold, or to dig the trunk of a tree into a hollow canoe for sailing, and who has been employedall his life in some ofthese low labours and cares;' can you ever imagine, that the native reason of such animals as these, can spin out of their own bowels such philosophical discourses, such moral arguments and inferences ? And especi- ally when the design of them is to lay a restraint upon those restless and violent powers of natural appetite and passion ? Mistake me not, Sir, I do not pronounce it utterly impossible in the nature of things, that reason should exercise itself in this manner; but it appears next to an impossibility, that such sort of moral reasoning should be found in any one hut or wig- wam among twenty nations of these American savages. Loe. Surely, my friend, you depreciate human nature to a very great degree, and represent it in such colours, as though the glorious light of reason, which shines in every son and, daughter of man, had raised them belt little above the beasts of the earth, and the birds of the air. PITH. If you please, Sir, to read theaccounts that travellers give us of these rudeand unpolished countries, you will find the constant customs and practices of whole nations perfectly agree- able to the colours in which I represent them. History and matter of fact sufficiently declare human nature in its present state, to be thus far debased and brutified, and that the glorious faculty of reason is so far overwhelmed andbenighted by stupid ignorance, that it seeks not after the God who made them, and it is so wretchedly led captive by passion, appetite, and a thou- sand objects of sense, as scarce ever to exert itself in any en- quiries about the themes of self-denial and mortification, much less to find out all these instances of virtue, or duty toward God or themselves. Besides, Sir, please to consider, that passion and appetite are such powerful and ruling springs of judgment, as well as of action in degenerate mankind, that they disguise and colour the truth asthey please, and turn vice into virtue, or evil intogood, by the vivacity and force of their representation. The faculty of fancy is almost always engaged on their side, and that helps to throw false colours on things, and leadstheuntaught
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