IMPOTENCE OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 19 



may be asked, and are habitually asked, as 

 CO what Man now is. No conclusions in 

 respect to the original condition of our race 

 can be more shocking to reason and common 

 sense, than many conclusions which meta- 

 physicians have pretended to establish respect- 

 ing its condition now. 



Another reason against declining this in- 

 quiry, is to be found in the fact that the 

 plea of impotence against the human under- 

 standing, is a plea which may be urged in 

 the service of the most irrational error, as 

 easily as, perhaps more easily than, in the 

 service of the most certain truths. Men en- 

 grossed by some particular theory are under 

 immense temptation to denounce the power 

 of faculties whose function it is to apprehend 



C 2 



