208 NATURAL AND CIVIL 



portance to him. He had no treasures to count ; 

 no property, the value of which, was to be com- 

 puted ; nor any variety of objects, the number 

 and value of which, must be expressed by fig- 

 ures. Arithmetic would therefore have been 

 an useless art to the Indian ; and he had not 

 jnade any attempt to attain it. They could 

 count as far as ten or twent}" ; all beyond this, 

 wag compared to the number of the trees, or 

 the hair on their heads. The only objects, on 

 which the Indian had empIo3ed his reason, were 

 those of external sense ; such as are material or 

 corporal, the idea, of which is received by the 

 senses. They had no name for any of the sci- 

 ences, or for abstract and universal ideas. 

 Time, space, duration, siibstance, and all those 

 terms, which are used to represent abstract and 

 ■universal ideas, appear to have been unknown ; 

 and probably never were the objects of their in- 

 quiry, contemplation, or thought. 



The ideas of religion, were extremely weak 

 and obscure in the savage. Our Maker.hdiS 

 not left us to a course of metaphysical reasoning 

 upon the connexion between cause and effect, 

 to come to the knowledge of his existence. 

 Long before men become capable of such ex- 

 ercises of the reasoning powers, they believe in 

 the existence of a Deity. A sense of his being, 

 seems to be inscribed upon the human mind. 

 And probably no tribe has ever been found, 

 that had not the idea of some superior powerful 

 being. Whether this was the object of fear, or 

 of love, or however it was represented, the idea 

 of a superior being seems to have been common 

 and general among all nations. It takes pl^cf- 



