SOME REMAINS of ANTIQUITY. 213 



ftln£l, rcafon, the Hyht of nature, has taught to thefe 

 nations the exiftence of fome great, fuperintending being, 

 the fource of life and good : if we difcover among 

 them the unequivocal acknowledgment of a future ftate 

 of exiftence, in which the warrior and the hunter, and 

 the virtuous of either fex, are thought to repofe from all 

 their cares, and to tafte, in fulnefs, unmixed phyfical 

 pleafures (the favage mind aflcs no more), i^ill we difco- 

 ver them under the preiilire of that fuperiiitious fabric, 

 which is founded upon the innumerable follies and w^eak- 

 nelfes of men. In the midft of the gloom, with which the 

 contemplation of fuch an abjeft flate of the fpecies is too 

 well calculated to over-cloud the mind of feiilibility, we 

 der.ve much confolation from the refle£tion, that (^;// nations 

 are capable of improvement ; and that in the general or- 

 der of nature, there feems to be nothing to prevent the 

 eftablilhment of a more juil religion over the furface 

 of the earth : a religion more juft, becaufe it teaches us the 

 relations ot God to the univerfe ; the relations of man to 

 God ; and the relations of men to each other. 



In the range of human improvement, there is a fmgn- 

 lar point, marked by the hideous fuperftition of the peo- 

 ple. The ftate of fociety to which 1 allude is that in 

 which the Mexicans were difcovered, and in which, at a 

 later period, we have known the Natchez, and the peo- 

 ple of Bogota. The Mexicans, there can no longer be 

 any doubt, were acquainted with many of thofe arts 

 which we have ever been accuftomed to confider as the 

 arts of a civilized people. Their aftronomy, their police, 

 their form of government, in feveral refpeds fo ftmilar to 

 that of the United-States, would feem to entitle them to 

 a place among nations coniiderably civilized. In all thefe 

 refpedls, they were fuperiorto moft of the nations around 

 them : they were greatly fuperior to any of the Indian tribes 

 now known to us. This higher degree of cultivation, 

 E e however. 



