292 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



here. We may, perhaps, reasonably conclude that 

 mankind, in this savage state of useless ignorance 

 and indolence, uncontrolled by their innate but 

 dormant reasoning powers, would, on the slightest 

 excitement, give vent to, and be guided only by, 

 their violent and bad passions, which may not 

 improperly stamp them with the name of human 

 brutes ; and we may picture to ourselves that we 

 can (while in this state) see them with a guttural 

 raucous voice prowling about and contending for 

 dominion with the scarcely equally ferocious beasts 

 of prey, or seeking revenge for real or imaginary 

 wrongs of their fellow men, and giving utterance 

 to their vengeance in bellowings and horrid yells 

 against each other, preparatory to murder and 

 destruction, and that this would end in fiend-like 

 growlings of satisfaction at having, in this business 

 of blood, accomplished their purpose. But the 

 providence of God is over all His creatures, and it 

 pleased Him that the reasoning powers should not 

 remain longer dormant, and the provision made for 

 the change, in the natural order of things, was 

 placed in the latent intellectual powers gifted to 

 man, and drawn forth from his inspired mind, which 

 thus put in action, as it may be presumed, was the 

 first effort of cause and effect that produced the 

 Bible, which, as far as we know, seems to have 

 been the first instrument of knowledge that shed 

 its rays over and revealed to mankind the account- 

 able station they were destined to hold on this 

 globe. Before the religious and moral precepts of 

 the venerable old Book made their way over a more 

 civilised world, and taught rational beings to wor- 

 ship one God, the Father of All, and to consider 

 each other as brethren, it does not appear that the 



