496 D'ALEMBERT. 



tical systems ; the following of schemes of polity from their 

 most rude beginnings to their greatest perfection, and pur- 

 suing the gradual development of some master-principle 

 through all the stages of its progress these are studies which 

 would interest a rational being, even if he could never draw 

 from them any practical inference for the government of his 

 own conduct, or the improvement of the society he belonged 

 to nay, even if he belonged to another species and was 

 merely surveying the history and the state of human society 

 as a curious observer, in like manner as we study the works 

 of the bee, the beaver, and the ant. How prodigiously does 

 the interest of such contemplations rise when it is the politi- 

 cal habits of our own species that we are examining, and 

 when, beside the sympathy naturally felt in the fortunes of 

 our fellow creatures of other countries, at every step of our 

 inquiry we enjoy the satisfaction of comparing their institu- 

 tions with our own, of marking how far they depart from the 

 same model, and of tracing the consequences of the variety 

 upon the happiness of millions of beings like ourselves ! How 

 analogous is this gratification to the kindred pleasure derived 

 from Comparative Anatomy, which enables us to mark the 

 resemblances and the differences in structure and in functions 

 between the frame of other animals and our own ! 



From the contemplation of political truths our minds rise 

 naturally, and by a process also of legitimate reasoning like 

 that which discovers those truths, towards the great Creator 

 of the universe, the source of all that we have been surveying 

 by the light of science, the Almighty Being who made the 

 heavens and the earth, and sustains the frame of the world by 

 the word of His power. But he also created the mind of 

 man, bestowed upon him a thinking, a reasoning, and a 

 feeling nature, placed him in a universe of wonders, en- 

 dowed him with faculties to comprehend them, and to rise by 

 his meditation to a knowledge of their Great First Cause. 

 The Moral world, then, affords additional evidence of the 

 creating and preserving power, and its contemplations also 

 raise the mind to a communion with its Maker. Shall any 

 doubt be entertained that the like pleasing and useful conse- 

 quences result from a study of Man in his political capacity, 



