154 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book 11. 



farther advanced in arts and fclences, who appear once to have in- 

 habited the country of North America. Of fuch a people, memo- 

 rials have been obferved by travellers in that country, particularly 

 by Adair, who was 40 years there, trading with the different 

 nations of North America, and appears to me to be a man of 

 veracity and accurate obfervation. He fays, in his hiftory of 

 the American Indians *, that, in certain parts of North America, 

 there are to be feen plates of copper and of brafs, to the number of 

 feven, five of copper and two of brafs ; and particularly of the 

 brafs, he fays, that they are round in their fhape like a medal, and 

 have upon them two ftars and an alphabetical charafler, at leaft it 

 fo appears, refembling the charadler by which we mark the M 

 diphthong in Latin. This Author likewife fpeaks f -of the re- 

 mains of regular encampments to be feen in this country : And 

 the fame was obferved by Carver, when he was there, as he has 

 related in his travels through the interior parts of North America $. 



Thus 1 have proved both a priori by the reafon of the thing, 

 and a pofteriori by fads, that religion does not belong to man in 

 his natural ftate, and not even in the firft ages of civility, but that 

 he acquires it, as he does arts and fciences, by the cultivation of his 

 intelledual faculties. There are fome, I know, who think that the 

 idea of a God, is an innate idea in man. But fuch men do not 

 know, any more than Mr Locke and Mr David Hume, what ideas 

 are, but confound them with fenfations ; from w'ich, no doubt, 

 our ideas are formed in the manner I have elfewhere defcribed, 

 (for in this ftate of our exiftence, all our knowledge arifes from our 

 fenfes) ; but they are quite different from our fenfations, as diffe- 

 rent as intelled is from fenfe, generals from particulars, and man 

 from brute. 



CHAP, 



* Adair, p. 178. 

 t Ibid. 377. 

 \ Carver, p. ^6, 



