The second book deals with man in relation to himself as an individual; the third as a member of society, and the last in respect to happiness. Throughout the whole Essay the distinctions arising from nature and instinct are defined and defended with vigor and acuteness. Both are proved to be equally great in degree, in spite of the hints constantly thrown out in reference to "God-like Reason _versus_ Blind Instinct." We confess our inability to discern the vaunted superiority of the powers of reason over those of its blinder sister. We see in the one matchless wisdom--profound decision--unfailing resource--a happy contentment as unfeigned as it is natural. On the other hand, we see temerity allied with cowardice--a man seeking wisdom on a watery plank, when every footmark may serve him for a funeral effigy; political duplicity arising from his confined generalization of facts; a desire to do right, but checked by accident and cunning--everywhere uneasy--always fatal. If the Christians' fables were true, we might say that Adam and Eve were originally in possession of Instinct and Reason, and fell by listening to the promptings of volition, instead of the unswerving powers of the brutes, and for a hereditary punishment was cursed with a superabundance of reason. For with all our intellectual prerogatives, we have yet failed to arrive at a definite course of action which should influence our conduct. The Essay, speaking of Government by Christianity, says:-- "Force first made conquest, and that conquest law, Till superstition taught the tyrant awe. ..... She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray, To power unseen, and mightier far than they: She, from the rending earth and bursting skies, Saw Gods descend and fiends infernal rise. Here _fixed_ the dreadful, there the blessed abodes, Here _made her_ devils, and weak hope her Gods. Gods partial, changeful, passionate, _unjust_, Whose _attributes were rage, revenge, or lust_. Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, And formed like tyrants; tyrants would believe. Zeal then, not charity, became the guide, And Hell was _built in spite_, and Heaven in pride." And again-- "For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."