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charlatan who pretends to skill in any art or science whatever. 

 The charms, incantations, and exorcisms, that here make a part 

 of the medical art, clearly show, that the grossest impositions, in 

 other matters as well as religion, may be turned to account among 

 an uninformed multitude. 



" The ignorance of the great body of the natives of India, has 

 shaded their character with a diffidence and timidity, which has 

 not only rendered them the slaves of their own monarchs, or 

 foreigners, in every age, but has degraded them, in some measure, 

 to an inferior rank among human beings. From this condition, 

 Avhich has so often called forth the contempt of the brave, and 

 the compassion of the wise, you in vain endeavour to raise them 

 while their intellects are chained down by the multiplied fetters of 

 their degrading superstition. The higher orders of the brahmins, 

 whose duty it is to undertake this work, and who are perhaps 

 alone able to effect it, are the least likely to make any such at- 

 tempt. While their own minds are comparatively enlightened by 

 a pure system of natural religion, and all those precepts of duty, 

 which cultivated reason teaches ; they "detain the truth in unrighte- 

 ousness," and commit the people to be guided by the grosser sys- 

 tems of superstition and error. 



" Those polemical disputes in religion and politics, which in 

 Europe sometimes disturb society, but which always awaken 

 curiosity, and invigorate the powers of intellect, are unheard of 

 in India. The Hindoo shelters himself from such turmoils in a 

 total apathy, or listlessness of thought, more resembling the still- 

 ness of the grave, or annihilation itself, than the common efforts of 

 a rational being. 



