84 ARRANGEMENT OF ANIMALS. 



grander scale, with fresh horrors and cruelties, the bloody 

 experiment of dragooning his subjects into uniformity, only 

 to instruct the world by a still more memorable failure. 



The increasing light of reason has destroyed many of 

 these remnants of ignorance and barbarism ; but much re- 

 mains to be done, before the final accomplishment of the 

 grand purpose, which, however delayed, cannot be ulti- 

 mately defeated ;— 1 mean, the complete emancipation of 

 the mind ; the destruction of all creeds and articles of faith ; 

 and the establishment of full freedom of opinion and belief. 

 I cannot doubt that a day will arrive, when the attempts at 

 enforcing uniformity of opinion will be deemed as irrational, 

 and as little desirable, as to endeavour at producing same- 

 ness of face and stature *. 



In the mean time, no efforts capable of accelerating a 

 consummation so beneficial to mankind should be omitted ; 

 and I have therefore attempted to shew you, that, on this 

 point, the analogies of natural history accord with the dic- 

 tates of reason and the invariable instructions of experience. 

 Certain external circumstances, as food, climate, mode of 

 life, have the power of modifying the animal organization, 

 so as to make it deviate from that of the parent. But this 

 effect terminates in the individual. Thus, a fair English- 

 man, If exposed to the sun, becomes dark and swarthy in 

 Bengal ; but his offspring, if from an Englishwoman, are 

 born just as fair as he himself was originally : and the chil- 

 dren, after any number of generations that we have yet ob- 

 served, are still born equally fair, provided there has been 

 no intermixture of dark blood. 



* These opinions do not need ths support of names ; or I might cite 

 Locke, in whose Letters on Toleration all the great principles on which the 

 freedom of the human mind rests are fully developed, and unanswerably es- 

 tablished. This may be called speculation, theory, or other bad names : I 

 have therefore pleasure in referring to the authority of a practical statesman 

 and enlightened magistrate. See Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, p. 261 — 

 270. Also, the Appendix, No 3, containing '' An Act for establishing 

 Religious Freedom, passed ill the Assembly of Virginia in the Beginning of 

 the Year 1786;'' — an admirable model, which has been perfectly success- 

 ful, and hitherto adopted in no other part of tite world. 



