===================================================== ...properly be termed a species of madness. Whatever opinions prevail in the minds of men which have no foundation in Nature, or natural laws, they can merit no other designation than insanity. Insanity, or madness, consists in unnatural or incoherent thoughts and actions, therefore, as no species of religious notions have any alliance with nature, it is but a just inference to say, that they individually or collectively comprise the term _madness_. In mild dispositions it may be but a harmless melancholy aberration; in the more violent it becomes a raging delirium, which destroys every thing that comes in its way, and for which it has sufficient strength. It destroys all moral and natural good which comes within its influence, and madly proclaims itself the _summum bonum_ for mankind! As yet there is scarcely sufficient reason among mankind to restrain this madness. It has so mixed itself up with all political institutions that there is no separating the one without revolutionizing the other. This is the chief cause of the frequent convulsions in society, as this madness cannot possibly engender any thing but mischief, and it is well known, that, in madness, there is no rest; it is always in a state of motion, unless there be a sufficient power at hand to curb and restrain it. Reason, or a knowledge of nature, is the only specific for it, and he who can throw the greatest quantity into the social system will prove the best physician. Several quacks have made pretensions to give society relief from this madness but they have only tortured the patient without checking the disease. Thomas Paine, and a few American and French physicians, have been the only ones to treat it in an effectual manner, and by the use of their recipes, and the assistance of Men of Science, I hope at least effectually to destroy the contagious part of the disease.