471 



a polite, if not a welcome reception; and thus addressed his friend: 

 " O that I had remained in that happy state of ignorance wherein 

 you first found me ! yet will I confess that as my knowledge in- 

 creased, so did my pleasure, until I beheld the last wonders of 

 the microscope; from that moment I have been tormented by 

 doubt, and perplexed by mystery: my mind, overwhelmed by 

 chaotic confusion, knows not where to rest, nor how to extricate 

 itself from such a maze. I am miserable, and must continue so 

 to be until I enter on another stage of existence. I am a solitary 

 individual among fifty millions of people all educated in the same 

 belief with myself; all happy in their ignorance! so may they 

 ever remain ! I shall keep the secret within my own bosom; 

 where it will corrode my peace, and break my rest: but I shall 

 have some satisfaction in knowing that I alone feel those pangs, 

 which, had I not destroyed the instrument, might have been ex- 

 tensively communicated, and rendered thousands miserable! For- 

 give me, my valuable friend, and Oi convey no more implements 

 of knowledge and destruction .!" 



Could this man have been instructed in the sublime truth of 

 religious philosophy, could he have been made the mean of impart- 

 ing a true system of natural theology, happy might have been the 

 consequences. To use the language of that excellent author who 

 has written such a work on the evidences of the existence and at- 

 tributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature, 

 the deluded brahmin would have found, that, according to his own 

 creed, "immortality upon this earth is out of the question: that, 

 without death, there could be no generation, no sexes, no parental 

 relation, i. e. as things are constituted, no animal happiness. The 



