Chap. V. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 291 



Lines and Figures, which never can give any confiderable elevation 

 to the Mind : Even in this more degenerate age, when men are 

 both born and educated worfe than they were then, I do not 

 think it is impoffible that a man, favoured of Heaven, may, by 

 Religion and the ftudy of the fame philofophy, be raifed fo much, 

 above other men, as to carry about with, him the fame oracle that 

 Synefms did. 



Thofe who have not ftudied the hiftory and philofophy of Hu- 

 man Nature, nor have been taught to diftinguifli betwixt the natural 

 ftate of the Animal and bis artificial or civilized ftate, will be fur- 

 prifed to hear of fuch a degeneracy, as I fuppofe, of the Species. But 

 the learned in Man know that, from the time he forfook that manner 

 of life which God and Nature had appointed for him, he has been 

 conftantly degenerating in Body. — That, with refpedl to his Mind,, 

 he has, in the firft periods of his progreffion, wonderfully improved, 

 and, in a manner, created, or at leaft refufcitated, his Intellectual part. 

 But, as all fublunary things are, by Nature, doomed to decay and cor- 

 ruption, in the latter ftage of his progrefs he declines alfo in Mind, 

 But, if to this decline in the ordinary courfe of Nature be added 

 Wealth £;nd Luxury, and their neceflary concomitants. Vice and Dif- 

 eafe, his degeneracy gaes on with rapidity ; and he becomes, at lad,, 

 when he is grown as weak as he is wicked, the moft contemptible, 

 as well as the moft miferable, of all the creatures that God has 

 made * : For, in that degenerate ftate, he will be vain, and the more 



O o 2. dege- 



• Homer has faid, and from the motnh of Jupiter too, rhat, of all the Animals* 

 upon this earth, Man is the moft miferable : 



n«i'T#r, ioVU Ti yXIXf tXIT'tlH T< »»t 'l^TH, 



So wretched had Vice and Folly made Men, even in the days of Homer. Cut 

 they were then ftrong of Mind and of Body j and therefore they were not contemp- 

 tible 



